{"id":189,"date":"2008-10-10T15:20:00","date_gmt":"2008-10-10T15:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/2008\/10\/kill-him-crosses-the-line.html"},"modified":"2008-10-10T15:20:00","modified_gmt":"2008-10-10T15:20:00","slug":"kill-him-crosses-the-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/10\/kill-him-crosses-the-line.html","title":{"rendered":"“He Is Not Like Us” Crosses The Line"},"content":{"rendered":"

Where is the line in the sand that makes everyone stand up and agree that things have gone too far? That line that lets us know when a campaign has gone beyond nasty to dangerous, past negative to incendiary, past “this is the way politics is” to “things have gotten horribly, horribly out of control.” <\/p>\n

This week the presidential campaign took an ugly, nasty turn beginning with John McCain’s attack ads painting Barack Obama as dangerous and too different to be trusted, followed by Sarah Palin’s remarks touting  Obama as a terrorist and using words like  “fearful” and “afraid” when describing the Democratic candidate and accusing him of “palling around with terrorists,”  to Tuesday night’s spectacle of McCain pointing in the direction of Obama, when contrasting how he and Obama voted on an energy bill that came up in Congress, and saying, “You know who voted for it? You might never know. That one<\/i>.” <\/p>\n

Where is the line in the sand? When is enough enough? When does a campaign come up with one despicable tactic too many, one smear too many, one distortion too many? One thrown stone too many. <\/p>\n

Negative campaigning is one thing. <\/p>\n

Othering crosses a line.  Especially when it arouses loathing and hatred in one’s audience. Othering is one of those clumsy terms academics came up with to describe the strategy of accentuating differences between people, stigmatizing and denigrating the “other.” It divides the world up between “us” and “them.” Othering Obama  reinforces the notion of him as unAmerican, less than human, or, worst, an enemy that needs to be gotten rid of.<\/p>\n

From the Washington Post<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Worse, Palin’s routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric’s questions for her “less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media.” At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, “Sit down, boy.”
    …
    The reception had been better in Clearwater, where Palin, speaking to a sea of “Palin Power” and “Sarahcuda” T-shirts, tried to link Obama to the 1960s Weather Underground. “One of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers,” she said. (“Boooo!” said the crowd.) “And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, ‘launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,’ ” she continued. (“Boooo!” the crowd repeated.)<\/p>\n

  “Kill him!” proposed one man in the audience.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Making one’s opponent out to be not just a political opponent, but an enemy of the state and scapegoat for all that’s dangerous and terrifying about the world crosses over into something akin to evil. Painting Barack Obama as arrogant and a foreigner, a Muslim, and not a Christian as he alleges, someone who pals around with terrorists, and married to a woman who hates America, can not be tolerated. It’s race-baiting, fear-mongering, and xenophobia at its worst. <\/p>\n

Where have we come as a nation that such tactics are tolerated? Someone yells out “Kill Him” at a rally and the speaker who claims to be a Christian doesn’t bother to stop and morally condemn such sentiments. It’s one thing for a campaign to use smear tactics to take votes away from the opponent, but stirring up hate and cries for murder is going over the line. No matter how pretty the face saying it, “he is not like us” is the sort of comment that has the potential to bring out the worst in people and catapult into some of the most despicable crimes against humanity. <\/p>\n

Enough with “this is the way politics is.” Things have gotten dangerously out of control.<\/p>\n

I say, Enough is Enough.
 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Where is the line in the sand that makes everyone stand up and agree that things have gone too far? That line that lets us know when a campaign has gone beyond nasty to dangerous, past negative to incendiary, past “this is the way politics is” to “things have gotten horribly, horribly out of control.”…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election-08","category-terrorism"],"yoast_head":"\n"He Is Not Like Us" Crosses The Line - Progressive Revival<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/10\/kill-him-crosses-the-line.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""He Is Not Like Us" Crosses The Line - Progressive Revival\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Where is the line in the sand that makes everyone stand up and agree that things have gone too far? That line that lets us know when a campaign has gone beyond nasty to dangerous, past negative to incendiary, past “this is the way politics is” to “things have gotten horribly, horribly out of control.”…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/10\/kill-him-crosses-the-line.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Progressive Revival\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-10-10T15:20:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Renita Weems\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"\"He Is Not Like Us\" Crosses The Line - Progressive Revival","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/10\/kill-him-crosses-the-line.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"\"He Is Not Like Us\" Crosses The Line - Progressive Revival","og_description":"Where is the line in the sand that makes everyone stand up and agree that things have gone too far? 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Weems is a nationally-renowned theologian and an ordained elder in the African Methodist Church whose scholarly insights into modern faith, biblical texts, and the role of spirituality in everyday lives have made her a much sought after author and speaker. Dr. Weems, formerly a member of the faculty of Vanderbilt Univeristy and Spelman College, has been celebrated by Ebony Magazine as one of America's top 15 preachers. She is founder of Something Within, a consulting service providing guidance for women of faith interested in connecting with their inner wisdom as well as interested in balancing faith and work, and their values with their vocation. Dr. Weems is a popular radio and television personality, regularly providing expert commentary on religion, gender, race, and sexuality. A guest speaker for numerous national gatherings of religious, civic, and sorority organizations, local churches, community wide events, and radio and television programs, Dr. Weems is in much demand as a speaker, preacher, and workshop leader. Ebony Magazine named her one of America's top 15 Her work as a scholar and a religious thinker has led to invitations to serve as a panelist for Bill Moyer's 1995 PBS award-winning Genesis Project, for various A&E, BBC, National Public Radio, the Michael Baisden radio show, and Hallmark cable programs on topics as wide ranging as miracles in the Bible, women, violence, and spirituality, and male-female relationships. She appeared on \"FlashPoints\" with Bryant Gumbel and Gwen Ifill to discuss matters related to religion and public life. Dr. Renita Weems is the author of several widely acclaimed books on women's spirituality and wholeness: Just A Sister Away (1987) and I Asked for Intimacy (1993), Showing Mary: How Women Can Share Prayers, Wisdom, and the Blessings of God (2003), and, more recently, What Matters Most: Ten Passionate Lessons from the Song of Solomon (2004). Her special talent is in drawing life inspirational wisdom from stories in the Bible about the triumphs and failures of ordinary people. A former contributing writer to Essence Magazine back in the late 80's, she has recently renewed her relationship with Essence with an article appearing in the December 2004 issue entitled \"Sanctified and Suffering.\" Dr. Weems writes a popularly bi-monthly e-column for www.beliefnet.org which focuses on matters of love and relationships. She has been particularly active lately speaking to professional women's organizations about women's spiritual values and support systems, juggling family and work, work and love, and women finding a balance between their spiritual values and their professional aspirations. She taught from 1987-2004 on the divinity faculty at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN as a professor of Hebrew Bible. She served in 2003-2005 as the William and Camille Cosby Professor of Humanities at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. Ordained an elder in the AME tradition, Dr. Weems has written about the waxing and waning of faith all believers endure on the spiritual journey. Her 1999 book Listening for God: A Minister's Journey through Silence and Doubt (Simon & Schuster) won the Religious Communicators' Council's prestigious 1999 Wilbur Award for excellence in communicating spiritual values to the secular media. She earned her undergraduate degree from Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and her Master and Ph.D. degrees from Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey. Finally, Dr. Renita Weems lives in Nashville, TN with her husband and daughter. Her readers can keep up with Dr. Weems by visiting her her blog, SomethingWithin.com, which allows her to keep in touch with readers interested in exploring women's values and interested in conversations about faith, love, values, and inner wisdom, and other topics of interest to what Dr. Weems likes to call \"thinking women of faith.\"","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/author\/rweems"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/129"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}