Stop the Hatemongering

Palin's pit bull attacks on Obama's acquaintance with Bill Ayers is escalating into something much more ugly.

Palin has continued to blame "main stream media" for her poor showing in interviews and is stirring up the crowds:

Palin's routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."

It doesn't stop at condescending, though, as Palin has stirred up anger at Obama's loose association to Ayers, the scales are tipping toward violent reaction:

Palin, speaking to a sea of "Palin Power" and "Sarahcuda" T-shirts, tried to link Obama to the 1960s Weather Underground. "One of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers," she said. ("Boooo!" said the crowd.) "And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,' " she continued. ("Boooo!" the crowd repeated.)

"Kill him!" proposed one man in the audience.

I worry that Palin doesn't even appreciate the incendiary nature of her comments. Hailing from a state where the largest African American population rests at 11% (in Fairbanks) and from a town that makes the top ten list of lowest percentages of African Americans (Wasilla has a whopping 1% of Blacks in its population) she may just not get it, but her advisors should (and if she doesn't it bodes badly for her ability to lead in the rest of the country)--this is a dangerous tack to take, and I hope tonight's debate can steer the conversation back to germane topics.