CNN is televised everywhere today :-) And how non-U.S. citizens are impacted by our political and financial behaviors and to not be aware of it or, worse, not caring about it is the height of American arrogance and why we can be seen as the ugly American. (not you :-)

It is the same when we discuss the environment.

Who is President and the impact on the rest of the world goes far beyond Roe v Wade. But then I'm preaching to the choir.

I'll get off my soap box now!

We've seen nothing but vilification of the current sitting U.S. President for the better part of the decade, and no one bats an eye. Crazy stories and speculation that Sarah Palin's youngest, Trig, was the result of a teenage pregnancy of her oldest, and no one calls that hateful or wrong. Crowds follow Michelle Malkin around at the Denver Democratic Convention, screaming essentially identical messages to the ones you point at above, and where's the outrage? Where's the reporting?

Republicans have to step on this kind of thing happening at their rallies, and they need to do it hard, and they need to do it fast, but understand that the idiots doing this are responding in kind to idiocy on the other side of the political aisle.

What concerns me in particular about the current difficulties for McCain/Palin on the campaign trail (supporters shouting "kill him," etc.) is just what concerns you and my solution is the same as yours--repudiate it loudly, immediately, firmly and without apology. McCain has done that and should continue to do so.

I do think there is a difference between crazy stories about, say, Trig's parentage and suggesting that a candidate is a "terrorist" or is "different from 'us'" because these suggestions can trigger intergroup violence based upon deeply held and often unconscious or semi-conscious prejudices.

White/black, Christian/Muslim, "Jap"/American, have all been used for the purpose of stirring racial, national and religious hatred in the service of political goals to ghastly effect.

We do need to draw lines between types of "villification" because our global history teaches us that we can all be moved in the direction of attempting to destroy a villified race,ethnicity, nationality or religion.

Check out The Ambivalence of the Sacred for a tremendous analysis of this problem here: http://www.beyondintractability.org/booksummary/10026/. As the linked review notes:

"In ethnoreligious violence, religion itself claims that its institutional self-understanding and prerogatives are implicitly or unconsciously subordinate to a different ideology, such as the nation-state or the ethnic group.

"Nationalist and ethnic leaders recruit religion to make sacred their struggles and therefore legitimate the kind of dynamism and activity described earlier, which includes martyrdom and suicide, as well as acts of sacrifice and compassion for the fellow countryman and woman or other co-religionists.

"This kind of religious violence is an extreme form of religious militance-it legitimates violence and sometimes sees violence as a sacred duty or obligation. The chapter gives examples from Bosnia, Northern Ireland, and elsewhere."

This applies equally to all types of intergroup violence, not simply religious. Nationalism can be a form of a "religion" as can any type of identity-based 'ism.'

The personal attacks on McCain as "unbalanced" or as you put it, "short-tempered or vindictive" or as Obama campaign ads implied - old, feeble & out of touch - are no less hateful than the truthful remarks that Obama consorts with a known and unrepentant terrorist who organized bombings of US government buildings. Obama himself admits that he knew about Ayers activities.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/10/obama-i-assumed.html?cid=134113179

Should the issues matter more than these attacks? Yes. But to assert that it is coming only from the "right" is naive and biased.

http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/still_ad/

Does that sound like an ad based on a message? Based on an issue?

Sounds like a smear to me.

Again, my concern is about stirring up identity-group bias in crowds. What I mean to discuss is the responsible way to respond to crowds calling for anyone's head, be that head "conservative" or liberal.

I don't believe that speech should be outlawed (I'm one of those darn ACLU liberals after all). I believe it should be condemned. See Concurring Opinions' well-reasoned post on this here: http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2008/10/ugly_political.html

As to the Barack ad about McCain not knowing how to use email that you asked me to link my readers to, I think it's silly and unworthy of a presidential campaign.

Last but not least, I did not say "short tempered and vindictive" -- the waiter in France did and I believe he was referring to Palin, not to McCain.

The point here, however, is to express worry about angry crowds during a time of economic upheaval and to provide resources for people interested in de-escalating these potentially dangerous events.

I returned from Europe more worried more about unruly mobs fueled by anger and fear than about the "smears" on Obama

Since you did not decry Democratic supporters for similar acts of hate speech, what you claim as a concern for "the responsible way to respond to crowds calling for anyone's head," appears to me to be a biased characterization of the Republican candidate for president and his supporters as an "unruly mob".

Of course, this is your blog. It is your opinion. But I find it disingenuous to claim ex post facto that your point was to encourage discussion of ways to defuse allegedly dangerous events. As you are an unabashed Obama supporter, it simply came off as a ham-fisted way of smearing McCain and his supporters.