Crowds at Palin Rallies Say "Sit Down, Boy!" and "Kill Him!"

...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."

[...]

...in Clearwater, where Palin, speaking to a sea of "Palin Power" and "Sarahcuda" T-shirts, tried to link Obama to the 1960s Weather Underground. "One of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers," she said. ("Boooo!" said the crowd.) "And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,' " she continued. ("Boooo!" the crowd repeated.)

"Kill him!" proposed one man in the audience.

Next up, I hear there's going to be a real-live lynching at the next Palin (or McCain, or McCain-Palin) rally. I'm just not sure if they're going to lynch a "liberal," a journalist, an African American, a "terrorist," or what. So many choices for Palin supporters, so little time! Sigh.

By the way, at what point does a candidate have a responsibility to intervene, to tell the crowd that their behavior is completely unacceptable, to stop egging them on to rage and possible violence, before they become criminally culpable themselves?  From Dana Milbank's report, it looks like Sarah Palin is right on the line...

P.S. I presume the Secret Service is on top of the threats of violence against Barack Obama and others?

UPDATE: Check out this report from a Sarah Palin rally in California. The subtitle is, "20,000 Christian zealots, anti-abortion fanatics, and mostly white suburbanites reconnected with their high school past at the Palin rally."

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