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

[Volokh, Eugene]

	Well, as I said, I'll happily urge that whoever shouted "kill
him," possibly about Obama, should be investigated, and prosecuted if
the statement was a true threat.  But even if there were two such
people, it's hard for me to fault McCain and Palin much for this.  And
if you want more examples, try the published Bush assassination
fantasies; the "Snipers Wanted" superimposed over Bush on the "Late Late
Show"; the "Abort Sarah Palin" stenciled graffiti; the Bush=Hitler stuff
(Hitler, after all, was someone who most of us would have been glad to
assassinate if we could have); and more.  And, yes, some of these are
doubtless explicable as hyperbole or humor or fiction.  Quite possibly
the shouters at the rallies were engaged in the same; plus if the
concern is about possible indirect effects on unhinged listeners, I
would think that hyperbole, humor, and fiction in the media (which some
of the examples I give involved) would have much greater indirect
effects.

	I've had to listen to eight years of Bush-loathing that has gone
far, far beyond normal political hyperbole, and that has involved
unsubtle suggestions at the propriety of violence.  I've been seeing
some of it with regard to Palin as well.  Forgive me if I think the
proper response to one or two nasties at rallies is to go after them,
and not go after the criticisms that McCain and Palin are making.

	Eugene

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Howard Schweber [mailto:schweber at polisci.wisc.edu] 
> Sent: Monday, October 13, 2008 4:17 PM
> To: Volokh, Eugene
> Cc: CONLAWPROF at lists.ucla.edu
> Subject: Re: Just how many audience members shouted bad 
> things at Palin's speeches?
> 
> 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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