How ugly will America get? I'm a cockeyed optimist. But this is worrisome. Dana Milbank in the Washington Post:
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."
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."
"I liked her too!"
- the New Yorker's legendary Lillian Ross on Sarah Palin
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/07/clint-eastwood-hints-hes_n_132506.html
Ann Althouse wrote about this incident too. She suggested that the pro-Obama media always listen for the worst thing anyone in the audience says at a Palin rally and then prints that comment as supposedly representing the mood of the crowd.
There's also the possibility that Obama supporters infiltrated the rally in order to say outrageous things which would discredit Palin.
Finally, it may well be that a few racists attend Palin rallies. But it's not as if people who hate conservative Christians, and working class and small town Americans don't also attend Obama rallies.