Sign of the Times

CNN is reporting a Sarah Palin rally in Polk City, Florida at which no mention is made in any of the signs of John McCain.

Those McCain Robocalls

Talking Points Memo has recordings and transcripts, along with some fact-checking, of the McCain-Palin robocalls that many observers are calling a new low in presidential campaigning.

Have You No Sense of Decency?

The Palin - McCain attacks that have stimulated such frantic rage at their rallies in the past two weeks have been compared to the tactics of Joe McCarthy, and we have been reminded by some commentators of the moment in the Army-McCarthy hearings when Joseph Welch issued his famous rebuke.

The exchange is in text and audio at AmericanRhetoric.com, which also shows these images, among others, from that moment.

Bob Shrum has compared the McCain-Palin rhetoric with the handbill of John F. Kennedy circulated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, the day he was shot and killed by an assassin.


In today's Times a useful analysis by Frank Rich of the McCain-Palin rhetoric, with further links to recent incidents at their rallies. Rich writes, "The McCain campaign has crossed the line between tough negative campaigning and inciting vigilantism, and each day the mob howls louder."

Frank Rich, "The Terrorist Barack Hussein Obama," New York Times, 12 October 2008.

Rich's column is accompanied by this image by Barry Blitt, which captures some of the many layers of association, menace, and triumphalism of the campaign --

Barry Blitt - New York Times - 12 October 2008

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Sarah Palin in the Pumpkin Patch

Sarah Palin and the Straight Talk Express came to our little town yesterday.

We did not hear about it until we picked up the Sunday paper on our front porch, and there she was, taking up most of the front page.

Governor Palin and her daughter were on their way from a rally in Johnstown to the University Park airport for a flight to Philadelphia, where Palin dropped the puck to start the game--and was apparently roundly booed by the crowd. Her surprise visit yesterday to the Way Fruit Farm was apparently a big success.

It is not a surprise that a visit from a vice presidential candidate would take over the front page of the Sunday paper -- even though Penn State beat Wisconsin in Madison yesterday evening, 48-7.

It is interesting, just to remind ourselves how thoroughly saturated we are by media practices, how normal it seems to us that a surprise, unnanouced appearance would be so fully covered by a local reporter and photographer. And of course the story captures exactly that double quality -- absolutely carried away by celebrity, absolutely not aware of the levels of staging and back-stage preparation this sort of surprise and its coverage entail, absolutely awed by how normal the candidate seems -- she's one of us!

Sarah Ganim, "AN OCTOBER SURPRISE -- Palin Mingles with Crowd in Unexpected Visit to Way Fruit Farm," Centre Daily Times, 12 October 2008.

(photo credit: CDT/Christopher Weddle; Centre Daily Times, 12 October 2008)