First off I should note that even though I find many things that Keith Olbermann writes very funny, I’m not a huge fan of his work. Sometimes it feels a little shrill and over-the-top. Today on MSNBC I read an article that really came across as heartfelt as any I have read in this ugly political season.
(you can read the article at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27406602/)
Today Keith wrote an article in response to the release of Ashley Todd, the McCain volunteer who made up the story of being robbed, beaten, and sadistically victimized by (surprise surprise) a big black man. As we all know now, she made up the entire ridiculous story not realizing that it would start to fall apart the moment she claimed to have taken money out of an ATM that wouldn’t even have a record of the transaction nor her picture on the security camera. In some ways I feel the sorriest for Blinn College, the school she attended. This can’t be good for their recruiting efforts. (Okay, bad joke at their expense). But I digress.
Yesterday McCain made a big deal about how racism wasn’t going to affect this election for 99 and 44/100 percent of the population. Does anyone even know how he came up with that number??? Anyway, I found that attitude to be incredibly disingenuous given that immediately after the first reports of her attack both he and Palin called Todd up personally to wish her well. And of the incident, John Moody, executive VP of Fox News wrote:
“Part of the appeal of, and the unspoken tension behind, Sen. Obama’s campaign is his transformational status as the first African-American to win a major party’s presidential nomination.
“That does not mean that he has erased the mutual distrust between black and white Americans, and this incident could become a watershed event in the 11 days before the election.
“If Ms. Todd’s allegations are proven accurate, some voters may revisit their support for Sen. Obama, not because they are racists, with due respect to Rep. John Murtha, but because they suddenly feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee.”
Racism has been used as a tool for political gain and candidate mistrust at almost every step of this fall election season by McCain, Palin, and many other Republicans (and probably some Dems too). And so as not to contribute to the extremism inherent in our current bipartisan political climate, I will definitely note that many fine Republicans have called the campaign out on this type of behavior. Most notably Colin Powell, George Will, and host of others.
But now is the time, as Olbermann suggests, for the candidate himself to step up and be the decent man he was before this campaign. Be the decent man he was when he stopped that woman from claiming Barack to be a scary Muslim and received boos from his own supporters.
Simply just be a decent man!
Thanks for your plea Mr. Olbermann.
I promise to get back to geeky technical stuff soon… hopefully November 5. 🙂