To the Obamaniacs sending me outraged emails over the phony assaulted McCain volunteer story: Get a life. It takes me much less time to delete than it does for you to write.
I don’t owe you or Sen. Obama an apology. My post noted press reports on an incident that has apparently proved to be without foundation. There was no racial aspect to it as far as I was concerned: I registered only that the assault had allegedly been carried out by Obama supporters — I hadn’t focused on the black-on-white aspect of the report until I read your emails. I don’t live in a race-conscious cocoon: I grew up in meager circumstances and attended integrated schools in the Bronx, where there were all kinds of black people and all kinds of white people (among all kinds of people of several other backgrounds); all in all, we got along fairly well. I prosecuted white people who preyed on black people and black people who preyed on white people. I’m not a simpleton who assumes all Obama supporters are black, and that if there is a report of an Obama supporter on the giving or receiving end of harrassment (or worse) that that perforce suggests a racial incident.
For what it’s worth (and that ain’t much), the Obama supporters I have been most critical of are white. And unlike some of my correspondents, I choose not slavishly to view the world through the pointless prism of race — my case against Obama is that he does view the world this way, which is why I regard him as a divisive figure rather than the post-racial healer he was falsely advertised to be. I know I am not a racist, and, as I don’t particularly care what the race-baiters think and believe them to be wrong on most everything else, it is of no interest to me whether or not they say I am a racist. People of good will disagree civilly without resort to that kind of nonsense. If you’re not of good will, I have no time for you.
Sen. Obama has expressly tied community organizing to “direct action.” As he stated in the chapter he contributed in 1988 to a compendium about organizing in the post-Alinsky era, “[G]rass-roots community organizing builds on indigenous leadership and direct action.” (Emphasis added.) Obama’s confederates, especially at ACORN, concede (indeed, brag) that “direct action” is sometimes violent lawlessness. One of his ACORN partners and most ardent admirers, Madeleine Talbott, led an attempt to storm the Chicago City Council in 1997. Some Obama supporters, like Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, have actually been terrorists who tried to kill people. All that aside, there have been various reports of harrassment against McCain supporters (just as there have also been reports of harrassment against Obama supporters).
Taking all this into account, I don’t apologize for thinking it was possible that an Obama supporter could conceivably have attacked the woman who made the false report. I also don’t apologize for believing that a “direct action” culture is likely to lead to violent attacks, regardless of whether this particular attack happened. I’m glad it didn’t happen and I hope the woman is prosecuted for obstruction of justice. I wish I had waited a few hours longer to do a post on the allegation, for then there would have been no post. But my brain is not ruled by political correctness, and if you are saying that you instantly concluded the story could not possibly have been anything but a hoax, it’s you who are kidding yourself.