Just how many audience members shouted bad things at Palin's speeches?

[Howard Schweber]

On the one hand, Eugene is obviously correct that if this issue -- 
assuming it is an "issue" at all -- is to be addressed by tallying up 
measures of offensiveness, the discussion will quickly devolve into 
silliness.

I thought that it was obvious that the concern about the two people -- 
as far as I know -- who yelled potentially things about Obama at McCain 
and Palin rallies was different.  I thought it was obvious that we, in 
America, live always with an historical imagination haunted by the 
specter of assassination.  We do not fault candidates for the fact that 
their supporters are ill-mannered boors.  We react -- again, I mean I 
thought that all of us react -- in a viscerally different way when we 
perceive the possibility of a campaign using tactics that have the 
potential to inspire repetition of our memories of national trauma.

I can't specify, with mathematical precision, which utterances do and do 
not fit this description; as a result, there is room for disagreement 
among persons of intelligence and good faith.  But no one can doubt that 
the absolute nastiness of "Sarah Palin is a c***" is not an invitation 
to political violence.  Declaring that an opponent "pals around with 
terrorists" comes a great deal closer to that nightmare boundary.

Which, I strongly suspect, is why McCain -- whom I understand to be a 
decent and honorable man -- has exercised a rare moment of control over 
his campaign staff and his running mate in declaring that their rhetoric 
from now on will be more "respectful."

Incidentally, the Wisconsin Advertising Project run by Ken Goldstein 
finds that Obama's campaign ads are running 65% positive and 35% 
negative, while McCain's campaign ads are running at something like 90%+ 
negative.  In case that becomes the next issue for discussion.

hs








Volokh, Eugene wrote:
> 	Let me touch on this again for a moment, since some are faulting
> Palin for her failure to react to what audience members shouted:  Does
> anyone have a relatively precise head count of the people who have
> shouted "kill him," "traitor," "off with his head," etc. at Palin's
> speeches?  I would think this would be relevant to whether Palin should
> feel some obligation to respond.  We generally aren't expected to
> denounce a lone kook, it seems to me, just because he is one of the many
> thousands of people in our audience.  So do we know how many such people
> there were, or whether there was document crowd cheering for what some
> of the kooks were doing?
>
> 	It's also not clear that we need to denounce even four kooks at
> our speeches; perhaps their being in the audience to the speech
> distinguishes them from mere supporters, such as the four who wore the
> "Sarah Palin is a cunt" T-shirts (at least one seems to have said she
> was an Obama supporter, and I take it the others probably agree), but
> I'm not sure how important the distinction is.  Still, it would be good
> to get a sense of the actual number of bad audience members involved.
>
> 	Eugene
>
>     
> Michael Kent Curtis writes:
>
> 	All of which leaves me where I began, the tenuous and baseless
> attribution of sympathy with terror to Obama--implicit in the pals
> around with terrorists (plural) charge --is subversive of the
> presumption of loyalty--and the idea of loyal opposition--that is basic
> to democracy.  I would have a similar reaction to claims that McCain
> pals around with terrorists.  The failure of Palin to discountenance
> cries of kill him, traitor, off with his head etc. during her
> speeches--but to go right on with no comment and no comment even after
> she must have later read about them in the Post's report and elsewhere
> is distressing and subversive of constitutional government.  When a
> member of the audience suggests that the opposing candidate should be
> killed and is a traitor we have a right to expect a response.  I don't
> recall cries of kill him before in presidential campaigns--now or in the
> past-but it is true that charges that are inconsistent with the
> presumption of loyal opposition have been made before.  They were
> disreputable then, and they are now.
> 	 
>
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