Ugly Americans

This campaign season is showing America both at its best and its worse. Sadly, Hillary - and no doubt the GOP as things move forward will follow suit - has pandered to the nasty, most bigoted, most selfish and intolerant under currents in American society, beginning with the race baiting that she and Slick Willie started back in South Carolina. Instead of trying to inspire Americans to be the best they can be, pettiness, bigotry and racism have become the stock in trade of Barack Obama's opponents. Some in the media - think Tim Russert and Lou Dobbs - have aided and abetted this low life behavior to varying degrees. What baffles me in part is that these racists overlook (1) that Obama is half white and (2) some of them may not be as "lily white" in their ancestry as they like to pretend. I likewise wonder how many of these racial bigots go to church every Sunday and pat themselves on the back for being "Godly Christians" - the majority of them most likely. MSNBC has a story that focuses upon this ugly side of the American public. Here are some highlights:

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For all the hope and excitement Obama's candidacy is generating, some of his field workers, phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed -- and unreported -- this election season. Doors have been slammed in their faces. They've been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they've endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can't fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president.

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Victoria Switzer, a retired social studies teacher, was on phone-bank duty one night during the Pennsylvania primary campaign. One night was all she could take: "It wasn't pretty." She made 60 calls to prospective voters in Susquehanna County, her home county, which is 98 percent white. The responses were dispiriting. One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn't possibly vote for Obama and concluded: "Hang that darky from a tree!"

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Documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy, the daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy, said she, too, came across "a lot of racism" when campaigning for Obama in Pennsylvania. One Pittsburgh union organizer told her he would not vote for Obama because he is black, and a white voter, she said, offered this frank reason for not backing Obama: "White people look out for white people, and black people look out for black people." Obama campaign officials say such incidents are isolated, that the experience of most volunteers and staffers has been overwhelmingly positive.

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"Will there be some folks who probably won't vote for me because I am black? Of course," Obama said, "just like there may be somebody who won't vote for Hillary because she's a woman or wouldn't vote for John Edwards because they don't like his accent. But the question is, 'Can we get a majority of the American people to give us a fair hearing?' "