America Is Purple

I must admit I am getting very fed up with this campaign. The constant back and forth, accusations, character assassination, and souring of messages makes me ill. Hillary Clinton and the media have been branding Barack Obama as an elitist, a racist, a secret Muslim, a radical Christian, a terrorist, inexperienced, a product of hype, a paper tiger, and everyone who supports him as being cultists. Yes, the phrase “Drinking the Kool-aid” was dropped. Which leads me to the following series of questions.

How does the media, ostensibly the seekers and purveyors of truth in America, let Hillary get away with branding Obama as elitist when she has been in Washington and New York for the last 16 years and has received way more support from special interests?

How can a rich white woman accuse a black man of being racist? Why has the media not simply shown the full context, or at least a bit more context, to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s “inflammatory” sermons. (I listened to both of them and in context they are not nearly as bad as the 30 second soundbites would make them seem. They’re available on Youtube, among all the people playing the 30 second version and calling him a racist. Do a search for “Reverend Wright in Context” and you’ll be able to find them.)

How can someone be accused of being a secret Muslim at the same time he’s being accused of being a radical Christian? Honestly, the cognitive dissonance required is enough to make my head hurt.

Barack Obama is being attacked for serving on the board of an “anti-poverty, philanthropic foundation” with a former member of the Weather Underground, a violent anti-Vietnam war group. Despite the fact that William Ayers is currently a “Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, College of Education” and was used as a consultant by Mayor Daley to “Shape that city’s now nationally-renowned school reform program” does not enter into it. Because Obama was on the board of an anti-poverty foundation with someone who 30 years ago was a leftist terrorist (all charges against him were dropped by the way), he is obviously a terrorist. (References on William Ayers can be found at wikipedia.)

The rest of the accusations are just silly. I have yet to see Hillary Clinton roll up her sleeves and help rebuild New Orleans or give money to people losing their homes. Has anyone seen Hillary Clinton do anything but give speeches? And yet Barack Obama is the one who is all talk.

Finally, for those of us who support Obama to be called cultists is a little much. In the “great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work” (Merriam Webster) kind of way, I suppose we are. What Clinton would like us to believe however is not that we have devotion to Obama’s movement for change, or his ideas, or his work, but that we are members of a cult of personality. We however do not think that Obama is perfect (he himself admits that. Hillary oddly doesn’t ever admit it when she makes a mistake.) we simply think that he is vastly better for this country than Hillary Clinton or John McCain. (For a little background, if this was eight years ago, I would be whole-heartedly supporting McCain. The last eight years have not been kind to John McCain. It is a tragedy.) We who support Obama think the smear campaign by Senator Clinton against Reverend Wright (who incidentally was the pastor that Bill Clinton turned to for “Moral Guidance” and forgiveness during the Monica Lewinsky scandal) and Senator Obama is just wrong, and unhealthy for America. Hillary, please stop. Please stop hurting America.

…once you’ve painted a one-legged war hero as a traitor to his country, what process is there to go back to? – Jon Stewart, America the Book.