Monday, October 13, 2008

Sarah Palin quoted man who called for Bobby Kennedy's assassination

And she did so in her big RNC speech. No kidding. From Frank Rich's NYT column today:
No less disconcerting was a still-unexplained passage of Palin’s convention speech: Her use of an unattributed quote praising small-town America (as opposed to, say, Chicago and its community organizers) from Westbrook Pegler, the mid-century Hearst columnist famous for his anti-Semitism, racism and violent rhetorical excess. After an assassin tried to kill F.D.R. at a Florida rally and murdered Chicago’s mayor instead in 1933, Pegler wrote that it was “regrettable that Giuseppe Zangara shot the wrong man.” In the ’60s, Pegler had a wish for Bobby Kennedy: “Some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow falls.”

And thus the McCain campaign's use of projection as a rhetorical tactic descends into farce as Sarah Palin favorably quotes an advocate of domestic terrorism.

No comments: