Sherry Chandler

Character assassination in your own back yard

Larry Webster’s column in today’s Lexington Herald-Leader is entitled Cover Stories for Obama Opponents. Unfortunately, it begins with one of the most egregious cover stories for Clinton opponents: Hillary is a monster. OR, to use Lambert’s formulation, Why Won’t that Stupid Bitch Quit. Here are the first four paragraphs:

My wife, Cheryl, and I once landed at a Zimbabwe airport only to find great hubbub and celebration. When we asked what was going on we learned that then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea, were arriving, too.

We wondered why they were there, and for years Cheryl claimed that every spring break, Hillary Clinton took her daughter somewhere overseas on tax money.

That was when we saw through a glass darkly. But now it is clear that Hillary Clinton went to Harare to learn political exit tactics from Robert Mugabe. He is having his opponents beaten.

It is already fairly legal in America to beat a black person, so Clinton still has that option. It is easy for her to keep running since the only cost to the country is driving races apart.

I graduated from Owen County High School with Larry Webster back in 1963. We were teen rebels together, or possibly just too sassy and full of ourselves to know when to keep our mouths shut and so smart we could get away with murder. We worked on the school newspaper together and the yearbook. We both had character roles in the senior play.

After getting his JD, Larry decided to practice law in Pike County in the deeps of Kentucky’s mountains where he lives the Libertarian values he preaches, growing his own food, living and buying locally, and defending civil liberties.

There are many things to admire about Larry, but logical thinking doesn’t seem to be one of them. Granted, he is not wrong in saying that there are people in Kentucky who will vote against Barack Obama for the wrong reasons rather than voting for Hillary Clinton for the right reasons. Exit polls in West Virginia, whose demographics are very like ours, indicated that 8% of Democrats voting said race was the most important issue. I’ll grant you that people lie, but still, the number is low. Nevertheless, in a state with a stained past, it’s valid to point out the logical fallacies of the racists.

Unfortunately, by opening his argument with the very ugliest kind of Hillary bashing, Larry has given up all credibility. He is doing to Hillary Clinton precisely what he has accused racist Kentuckians of doing to Barack Obama. Making a vicious ad hominem attack with no reference to any fact.

I am furious with him, and all the moreso because our connection goes back so far.

Are there reasons to vote for Barack Obama? I’m sure there must be, but Larry doesn’t give us any. He tells us Obama is

a brilliant young man of principle with sparkling common sense and not owned by any master

but we have to take his word for it. He doesn’t give us any examples or tell us why these characteristics necessarily make Obama the best choice for President. That’s more ad hominem argument.

Then there’s this paragraph. I don’t know what this is about, whether it’s supposed to be parody or mouth-frothing righteous anger. After listing one of the racist cover stories as They say Obama wouldn’t be sworn in on the Bible, there’s this:

Listen and listen good. We real Americans are only going to tell you once before we run your ass off. The Bible is a Holy Book of one of many religions of the American people. Real Americans will die for the right of those who believe the Bible to use or not use it however they want. We will fight for the right of every American not to have to pay homage to somebody else’s religion.

If you don’t believe that, get your stuff and get out — and take that stupid lapel pin with you.

Is this the racist speaking? Or Larry speaking to the racist? I don’t know.

I’m as prejudiced against flag pins as anybody but still…

Either way I’m sad to say, if you’re looking to divide the country and stiffen the backs of Clinton supporters against Obama, Larry’s column makes a damn good start.

_________________________

By the way, I have a letter to the editor in today’s Herald-Leader. My letter is in response to a column by Charles Baker in last Sunday’s paper. Mr. Baker also exhorted me to vote for Barack Obama because he is black and I am white. (That column has already gone behind the archival curtain. Short abstract here.)

The letter is truncated in the paper. Here is the long version:

So Charles Baker would have me vote for Barack Obama because I am a guilty white person, without regard for the fact that Senator Obama has promised to “fix” a Social Security program that isn’t broken, that he has a weaker health care proposal than does Senator Clinton, that he has promised a Reagan/Bush foreign policy, or that he has referred to the Republican party as the party of ideas.

Mr. Baker is right. Kentucky has a shamefully racist past, but I cannot atone for that past by voting for Senator Obama when I don’t think his policies are the best ones for the Democratic party or the nation, and maybe not even for African Americans. It’s just as racist to vote for the black guy because he’s the black guy as it is to vote against the black guy because he’s the black guy.

Although the student Mr. Baker remembers may or may not have changed his mind about the innate superiority of white basketball players, time and the facts have proved him wrong. I doubt you’d find many Kentuckians today who would argue that point. We may be racist but we like to win.

By the same token, I think Kentucky’s voters are capable of looking beyond their putative racism in deciding who they will vote for in the primary. Your poll shows that the economy is Kentucky’s chief concern. If Kentuckians thought Senator Obama’s economic policies would ease our pain, I think they’d vote for him.

Possibly related posts:

Character assassination

Clinton Derangement Syndrome

Department of second thoughts

I have eaten squirrel brains and I am not demented

Hmmm

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