Say Anything Blog

The Washington Post has a story up about Obama volunteers who have faced racism and bigotry during this primary season...while contacting fellow Democrats.

Which, of course, isn’t a point the Post cares to make too strenuously.

For all the hope and excitement Obama’s candidacy is generating, some of his field workers, phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed — and unreported — this election season. Doors have been slammed in their faces. They’ve been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they’ve endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can’t fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president. …

Victoria Switzer, a retired social studies teacher, was on phone-bank duty one night during the Pennsylvania primary campaign. One night was all she could take: “It wasn’t pretty.” She made 60 calls to prospective voters in Susquehanna County, her home county, which is 98 percent white. The responses were dispiriting. One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn’t possibly vote for Obama and concluded: “Hang that darky from a tree!”

Documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy, the daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy, said she, too, came across “a lot of racism” when campaigning for Obama in Pennsylvania. One Pittsburgh union organizer told her he would not vote for Obama because he is black, and a white voter, she said, offered this frank reason for not backing Obama: “White people look out for white people, and black people look out for black people.”

There’s more, including Hillary Clinton supporters ransacking an Obama campaign office.

Who knew the oh-so-tolerant liberals could be so...hateful?  Is it time to put the myth of the loving, tolerant liberal to bed?

Oh, and by the way, I’m sure the media will remember these incidents once the Obama campaign starts insinuating Republican racism (and you know they will) in the general election.