The No-Talk Express
October 7th, 2008, 10:38 AM EDT
h/t Think Progress
Isn’t this the exact opposite of the campaign John McCain used to run? Forget talking to Sarah Palin. The media wasn’t allowed anywhere near her supporters in Clearwater because negative things had been written about her.
When reporters tried to leave the designated press area and head toward the bleachers where the crowd was seated, an escort would dart out of nowhere and confront him or her and say, “Can I help you?” and turn the person around.
When one reporter asked an escort, who would not give her name, why the press wasn’t allowed to mingle, she said that in the past, negative things had been written. The campaign wanted to avoid that possibility Monday.
alan,
Where is your story about the signs that were banned at obama rallies? Or the Missouri teacher who was just disciplined for using taxpayer money to indoctrinate students at a missouri charter school by having them dress in fatigues while chanting praises to Obama?
October 7th, 2008 at 10:50 am
The McCain campaign takes a lesson from the totalitarian regimes of history, not to mention the Bush regime. Control the flow of information, control the public perception.
Keep all the high crimes and misdemeanors out of sight.
October 7th, 2008 at 11:10 am
I would think twice about attending these rallies that are changing character as I type. The shout outs were just the beginning. People are being ramped up and are emotional about what they are hearing. The crowds are close to becoming a lynch mob. Think I’m kidding? Take a look back…it wasn’t all that long ago that such inflamitory rhetoric whipped up crowds to lynch, burn, and destroy all that Americans value.
If republicans want responsibility for such actions…well, so be it, but it is to their peril.
When people attack, restrict, or threaten the news media, the rally reflects the finest Soviet values of the past.
October 7th, 2008 at 11:25 am
The brown shirts restricted news reporters attending “rallies”. I guess that’s a great role model for those who want political gatherings to grow into hate-filled mobs. I would hope not, but I’m an American.
October 7th, 2008 at 11:35 am
How can you stay in the same room with Hannity? He spews HATE. All he lacks is a red suit and pitchfork.
October 7th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Isn’t this what they do in totalitarian states?
The media should do what they did in Spain, and just not cover them…but the corporate media has too much consolidation and deregulation on it’s agenda.
October 7th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Old,
Do you also have an issue with the obama camp banning signs at their rallies? While I agree that the press should be able to talk to rally attendees, if you are going to point out one campaign doing something like this shouldn’t both be taken to task?
October 7th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
“People are being ramped up…”
Is this a deliberate effort by the McCain to incite the racists of the radical right to violence?
Are they looking for riots, or merely an assassination?
Could Limbaugh tell us?
October 7th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
no…they like professional looking signs that show up in the views of thousands of people who attend the rallies. It also prevents the hate filled signage that is now showing up at the Palin mob rallies. Management of emotionally charged signs is a measure of a rational campaign.
October 7th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
When we appeal to the most foul emotions in people, we should not be surprised at their response.
October 7th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
“How can you stay in the same room with Hannity? He spews HATE. All he lacks is a red suit and pitchfork”
Santa has a pitchfork?
Sorry, I just couldn’t pass that up….I agree that Sean Hannity is an absolutely dilluted person who has repeated the half truths so often that he believes them, but the red suit and pitchfork line just made me laugh for a moment…..
My apologies for stepping on your stuff.
October 7th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Perhaps the driver of McSames “straight talk express” should take a breathalyzer test.
October 7th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Robert: “I would think twice about attending these rallies that are changing character as I type…. The crowds are close to becoming a lynch mob.”
I totally agree. I wonder what happened to the suspected assassins during the DNC. Or the right-winger who shot up a Unitarian church in Tennessee. The tone is sounding more like the right-wing militia groups of the ’90s.
This is what the Republican Party has become. Goldwater’s puking in his grave, from spinning so much.
October 7th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
These sort of Roveian tactics at Palin rallies are not surprising, they want no serious questions asked or her and they are shielding her from the media except for Fox news. What are they protecting her from? The voters need to hear straight answers from candidates, not given some stump speech as she did in the debate.
October 7th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Sarah: Goldwater KNEW what a dunce McSame is. Read his son’s new book, it really is most illuminating.
The righ-wing-o’matics are really bordering (if not passed it) on becoming domestic terrorists and advocating treason. I mean I cannot imagine anyone on the left tolerating calls to blow McSame away.
If Palin had any human parts left, she would denounce this behavior LOUDLY and PLAINLY. By the way, I thought it was illegal to threaten the life of a presidential candidate? Apparently not if you are Republican.
Scary stuff indeed.
October 7th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Actually, Goldwater was nutty, but he wasn’t that bad. He was a proud conservative..like Ron Paul. They both have a form of thought that is nothing like McShame (at least at present with his McCarthy style approach to the campaign).
October 7th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Yes, Shouting “Kill Him” at a rally is terroristic threatening, which is a class C felony.
October 7th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Barry: Perhaps that should be explained to the Salmon Queen, and her supporter’s next time she holds one of her “brown shirt” rallies…by hauling the Salmon Queen and her minnows away in cuffs.
October 7th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Spot on. Whoever shouted that should have been taken in to custody my law enforcement immediately, and Palin should have denounced it.
October 7th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
They gave him rousing applause and two passes to the next event
October 7th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
I’d love to just get close enough to smell her perfume! Lemme thru! I’m famous!
October 7th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
T. Mason chastises OldLefty:
Umm.. T. Mason… I love ya, and I mean that, but you kinda did the same thing, didn’t you? You were the first respondent to this posting and you said nothing about it being bad. You just pointed out that someone had been reprimanded for bad behavior in support of Obama, which is good and as it should be. And you pointed out that some signs were banned from an Obama rally (which is not exactly the same as prohibiting reporters).
Only when you wanted to make OL look bad did you finally condemn the press ban. OL was only doing the same thing you did in your first post – doesn’t seem right for you to condemn her for the same behavior you exhibited only an hour and a half earlier.
You were complaining about hypocrisy in another thread I believe?
October 7th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
I think it’s absolutely wrong to ban signs at rallies.
From a local newspaper:
Presidential campaigns stamp out homemade signs
By Brittany Anas (Contact)
Thursday, October 2, 2008
“Some of the Democratic faithful who flocked to Michelle Obama’s appearance in Boulder this week brought handmade posters — some that were classic in form (“Obama-Biden 08”), and others with a more politically witty twist (“Ba-rack the Vote).
But campaign staff members wouldn’t allow the civic-minded crafts onto the University of Colorado field where Obama delivered her speech. Signs and banners also won’t be allowed at Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s campaign stop Friday at Colorado State University’s Pueblo campus.
The presidential campaigns this election are saying thanks, but no thanks, to homemade signs.
It may seem ironic that signs and banners — classic symbols of political expression — are considered contraband at campaign rallies, but it’s not a constitutional violation, a First Amendment attorney says.
And political strategists say the rule is a safe way to keep a “McSame” sign from sneaking into a McCain event or a “NoBama” sign from being caught on live television at an Obama rally”
The media is different from the public having signs, still I think it’s wrong.
October 7th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
Um,
Not sure how I was trying to make OL look bad, I asked a question but I plainly said in my quote that BOTH are wrong. My first post to ALAN was in response too, and I know this is liberal board, the blatant fact that we hear about this in the MSM but never about what the obama camp does, and many times it is the same darn thing.
Also, the post about the teacher on here, and I agree he should be fired. But the obvious response? All conservatives are like this guy. that isn’t true. No coverage that I have seen so far, other than Fox about the Missouri teacher who put kids in fatigues and had them chanting about Obama. Why not?
Now I think I am one of the few on this board, but not in real life who is a conservative who is willing to look at both sides even though I am set in a lot of my ways. What I am finding, with the exception of a few on here is that the liberals for the most part on this board won’t concede ANY wrongdoing by anyone from the left. I have liberal friends that I get along with splendidly in real life, but they certainly don’t call me names, accuse me of being gay, call me an idiot, a commie etc. etc. etc.
Now how aggravating is that.
October 7th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
OH, and one last thing. Where is all the coverage about the ABC reporter who was pushed into traffic in Denver by a policemen outside a hotel where high level DNC big whigs were meeting while he and his camera crew were standing on a public sidewalk? Isn’t that suppression of the press as well? No play on here, or the MSM, just blurbs.
October 7th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
T. Mason,
You said,
” What I am finding, with the exception of a few on here is that the liberals for the most part on this board won’t concede ANY wrongdoing by anyone from the left. I have liberal friends that I get along with splendidly in real life, but they certainly don’t call me names, accuse me of being gay, call me an idiot, a commie etc. etc. etc.”
…………………
We can ALL say that. Look at the names that liberals are called here.
You have to pay to comment on Rush Limbaugh’s site, whereas Alan lets people insult him for free.
On more left leaning sites liberals are very critical of Democrats, on this site though, it seems to be a full time job, combating the Obama bashing.
You can’t say, that when conservatives were in love with Bush, that posters on right leaning websites brooked much dissent.
Remember, we are ALWAYS called anti- American and traitors…criticism is dismissed as “Bush derangement syundrome”, (in spite of the treatment of Clinton).
I remember how they treated the 9/11 families, and Cindy Sheehan.
Also, much of the ease of insults comes from the anonymity
October 7th, 2008 at 7:43 pm
You know Lefty, maybe Alan should charge to comment read insult him, he would be a very rich man. He could probably retire tomorrow. Hey there’s a thought!!
October 7th, 2008 at 7:53 pm