Re: Chicago Police Probed for Racist Calls About Obama
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Latest attack on Obama:
personal ad calls for his assassination</font size></center>
By Lee-Anne Goodman – May 29, 2009
WASHINGTON — Some are convinced he's the Antichrist. Others have made jokes about watermelon and fried chicken, and sent emails containing racist slurs. And now a personal ad in a Pennsylvania newspaper has called for his assassination.
President Barack Obama's milestone presidency has brought out its fair share of racists and hateful misfits, evident in an ad placed in the Times-Observer of Warren, in northwest Pennsylvania, earlier this week.
The ad in Thursday's paper read:
"May Obama follow in the steps of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy!"
All four presidents were assassinated in office.
The paper apologized on Friday, calling it an oversight. Its publisher, John Elchert, said the advertising staff didn't make the historical connection between the five men.
Elchert added that the Times-Observer has been in touch with police, and the Secret Service was in town on Friday to investigate the person who placed the ad.
But the Pennsylvania ad is just the latest in a series of disturbing and incendiary attacks on Obama, many of them racially tinged.
"Unfortunately, the attitude of the person who placed the ad is too prevalent in Pennsylvania," said Michael Morrill, the executive director of Keystone Progress, an advocacy group based in Harrisburg, Pa.
"In the last few days we've gotten emails calling the president 'chimp' and the n-word after he nominated Judge (Sonia) Sotomayor. It makes it very difficult to organize around issues when the opposition to the president's policies is so racially charged."
Keystone Progress exposed racist incidents at rallies for the Republican ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin in Pennsylvania last year, including one event at which someone called out "kill him" in reference to Obama, the Democratic nominee.
The situation doesn't seem to have progressed much since those rallies.
Protests held across the United States last month, known as tea party and teabagging rallies in reference to the Boston Tea Party, were ostensibly meant to rail against big government spending. The movement began when organizers sent teabags to their congressional representatives on April 1.
But instead, those protests were populated by several attendees waving signs with racist slogans, including a child in Denver who carried one that read: "Obama-nomics: Monkey See, Monkey Do."
Another sign in Chicago featured a photo of Adolf Hitler with Obama's head super-imposed over the infamous dictator's, and read: "Barack Hussein Obama: The New Face of Hitler." Another urged him to go "back to Kenya."
Such sentiments haven't been exclusive to the odd face in the crowd, and are a far cry from the insults about George W. Bush's intelligence that were routinely aimed at the former president by his opponents.
Some elected officials and low-level Republicans, in fact, have been forced to resign for making racist jokes in the five months since Obama's historic inauguration.
In Florida, a Republican state committee member quit after she sent a racist email about the inauguration festivities.
The email from Carol Carter, who represented Hillsborough County, was entitled "Amazing." It read: "I'm confused. How can two million blacks get into Washington, D.C., in one day in sub-zero temps when 200,000 couldn't get out of New Orleans in 85 degree temps with four days notice?"
In a subsequent missive to those on her recipient list, she wrote: "I have been asked to send this apology for my earlier email. I am sorry that it was received in a negative manner. I do hope that we are going to be allowed to keep our sense of humour."
A southern California mayor was also forced to quit earlier this year after sending an email depicting the White House lawn as a giant watermelon patch.
Dean Grose, mayor of Los Alamitos, said he meant nothing racist by the email, but said the controversy over racism has made it difficult for him to continue to lead the city.
The Internet, as always, is a treasure trove of anti-Obama sites, ranging from those accusing him of being a Marxist and a secret Muslim to one that's entirely devoted to the notion that he could be the Antichrist.
Ironically, it's been Obama and Sotomayor, his pick for Supreme Court Justice, who have been accused of racism this week.
Sotomayor's remarks about Latina wisdom in 2001 has become a flashpoint for conservatives who oppose her nomination.
"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life," said Sotomayor, who is of Puerto Rican descent.
Those comments have prompted both talk show megastar Rush Limbaugh and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to call Sotomayor a racist.
Gingrich said Sotomayor, who would be the first Latino on the country's highest court, has argued that if a white male nominee had said something similar, he'd be forced to withdraw his nomination, and so should Sotomayor.
Limbaugh had this to say: "Reverse racists certainly do have the power to implement their power. Obama is the greatest living example of a reverse racist and now he's appointed one."
Copyright © 2009 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5iAKhXQV6M31ixUatPPRlVplIhP0g
It's always some anti-Obama, bullshit in that paper. Isn't this the same paper that reported on the bar with the Obama t-shirts????
