Media Selectively Outraged by Campaign 'Hate'

The mainstream media scream and shout that the McCain campaign and its supporters have been running a racist and negative campaign. They’ve made much ado about “angry” individuals at McCain campaign rallies and McCain referring to Obama as “that one” in last week’s debate, yet they ignore real ugliness being displayed by the left. Why? The word “inconvenient” comes readily to mind. So does the phrase “double standard.”

Sarah Palin was in Philadelphia over the weekend to ceremonially drop the puck at a hockey game. Who was there to greet her? Plenty of Obama supporters, sporting shirts that you wouldn’t want to wear in front of your mother, grandmother, or anyone with a sense of decency. Gateway Pundit has the photos of shirts calling Palin a word that normally would have feminist types clamoring for blood. But as Palin is a conservative, all bets — and common decency — are off. (Nasty language alert if you click on the link above.) And you can bet the following comments won’t be nitpicked to death by the self-anointed media elite:

Outside on Broad Street, waiting for Palin to leave, one man was heard saying: “Let’s stone her, old school.”

Another protester shouted at someone entering the hotel, “Wait till your daughter wants an abortion, you hypocrite.”

But it’s only the right that’s angry, you betcha.

Michelle Malkin has chronicled some other very disturbing anti-Palin cartoons and comments that have surfaced over the past six weeks, including Sandra Bernhard’s, er, “tasteful” onstage threat that if Palin were to set foot into Manhattan, she’d be gang-raped by black men — in a performance that was amazingly given a positive spin by both the Washington Post and Washington Examiner.

For years, haters of President Bush have likened him to Hitler, called him the No. 1 terrorist, talked about how stupid and evil he is, etcetera. And as his presidency draws to a close, BDSers (for Bush Derangement Syndrome) need an outlet for their hatred: they have turned into PDSers. It’s almost frightening in its intensity. It’s important to be engaged in the political process, but to allow your dislike of a politician or his policies to reach the point where it negatively colors everything isn’t healthy. Pajamas Media’s own Dr. Helen Smith recently wrote about “Palin haters,” where she commented that the behavior of the Palin hater in question “is nothing but the regression to a two-year-old: throwing a tantrum because she has no idea that other people have different opinions than one’s own and that those opinions may be just as valid or more so.”

Meanwhile, talking heads are tut-tutting over the “negative turn” of the McCain campaign, worrying that racism is rearing its ugly head.

Who has been injecting race into the campaign? Obama. His comments about how “they” will try to “scare” voters about Obama’s “funny name” and the fact that he “doesn’t look like the other presidents on the dollar bills” don’t exactly speak to the post-racism we have been promised by The One. Nor do references to McCain “bamboozling” and “hoodwinking,” straight out of a scene from Malcolm X.

McCain has bent over backwards to make sure he doesn’t say or do anything that could possibly be construed as racist or unfair, even garnering boos at a town hall meeting last week by saying Obama is a “decent family man with whom I happen to have some disagreements.” But, as Jonathan Martin points out, McCain is in a lose-lose situation. Bring up Obama’s questionable associations, which point to character and judgment? Racist. Yet when the Obama campaign says because McCain doesn’t use email he’s out of touch, the press buys the explanation that the focus is on McCain’s time in Washington, not his age.

I’m waiting for Good Morning America and those other morning shows to talk about the disturbing t-shirts and threatening comments aimed at Sarah Palin, courtesy of Obama supporters, in Philly last weekend. But I have the feeling I’ll be waiting for a long time.