Back in January, I relayed an email exchange with a former reader/current Obama supporter, who was imploring me to “join the movement” and using the occasion of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day to do it. I responded with a link to “Ultimately a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus.” where I discuss Obama and King. The response, which should be familiar to anyone following my attempts to debate Obama supporters over the last few years, came back: “What can I say? Its where I stand.”

Several months later I sent over a link to Paid the (Opportunity) Cost to be the Boss because it was my first major Obama post in a while, and I was curious to hear her opinion.

I didn’t notice that I hadn’t received a response until Sunday, when the following exchange took place:

[redacted]: I know I’m hella late responding to your email but frankly I stopped reading you when you went into lynching Obama. Images like this are helpful though. Thanks. McCain/Palin in ’08! Woo hoo!

MC: You know, I need to fill the hours between my crucifixions, inquisitions, internments, killing fields, and holocausts.
Trying to decide if it would be funnier if you were serious or kidding.

[redacted]: Whatever works for you, massa.

MC: Can’t say being accused of being a racist after detailing my political differences with a presidential candidate works all that well for me.

[redacted]: In all seriousness and with all due respect, please go fuck yourself. Thanks so much.

Now I’m quite used to being called a racist for my opposition to Obama, and after four years of it, I should be. But the word “lynch” has just one definition:

To execute without due process of law, especially to hang, as by a mob.

So in addition to being a one-man mob, I’ve executed someone sans trial, and did it solely with words, on the internets no less. Ok…

In a world where Hans von Spakovsky, the former Justice Department official and current employee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has decided that his main goal in life is to prevent minorities from voting, and all those right-wing pundits and politicians felt comfortable letting their (Confederate) flags fly after Katrina, I’m the fucking problem here? Words stand for things, and when people misuse them this blatantly, it reduces their meaning. I’ve mentioned race and Obama exactly once in a post, and that was when Obama threw Don “Nappy headed hos” Imus a lifeline by turning the focus away from the shock jock (nullus) and towards…the black community who Obama said were “complicit in diminishing ourselves.”

I guess this would all be easier to understand if this weren’t coming from someone who allegedly earns a living from…wait for it…writing, and has in the past shown (in the comment section of this very blog) something approaching political comprehension. Instead, it gets filed with the other accusatory email, alongside the guy who wants to “knock [my] fucking teeth out of [my] mouth”, the guy who accepted and then reneged on a challenge and then resorted to name-calling, and the other guy who accepted the challenge and then promptly evaporated.

I get that people have strong feelings for Obama and against the alternative. I get that some people are projecting their beliefs onto him. What is truly beyond me is the attitude that you can fervently support a candidate – to the point of threatening violence or accusing a non-believer of murder – yet show no ability/inclination to defend your own position. I just keep picturing a defense lawyer refusing to actually advocate for his client, instead looking at the jury and repeatedly saying “he can’t be guilty, just look at him.” It’s what you do when you don’t have a case, not when you think your case is airtight. And to a certain extent, I sympathize. After all, it’s not like Obama is arming his fanatics with anything more than buzzwords and jargon. Still reverting to racially-charged name-calling and threats seems a bit silly when it’s substituted for debate. I’d never think of attacking a physicist who, say, didn’t believe in string theory by calling him a hater and telling him I’ll smash in his windshield. I’d either learn enough to refute him on the merits or suffer in silence, because to do otherwise would just be embarrassing.

This is why people mock Obama as being messiah-like: few of his supporters show the capacity for independent thought, and none of them truck non-believers. I guess that’s all in the game, but I think accusing me of lynching Obama is a few steps out of bounds, especially when there is no support for such an allegation. I’m doing the same thing I’ve always done and will always do here, advocating my beliefs, and calling out public figures who are full of shit. I’m not going to fall in line because the Democratic party happened to nominate a nominal (at best) Democrat. Never that.

So keep it coming, I’m sure there are other names I can be called and crimes of which I can be accused. It’s certainly easier than taking the challenge…