Don't let the ghosts and the ghouls disturb you, love.

Today I'm going to share with you a brief moment of outrage in what is really becoming a season of hope, so please bear with me.

Through the last several weeks as the McCain supporters have gotten more and more desperate we've watched their racism come out out into the open. We've all seen pictures of the McCain supporters who've taken stuffed Obama monkeys to his rallies. A couple of weeks ago on a Fark thread I ran across this picture--

The funny thing is the guy that posted that picture through a hissy-fit when he was called out on the racist nature of his little photoshop.

Today we have this horrible story being pushed by FOX in which a white woman was supposedly mugged at an an ATM by an Obama supporter who "carved" a backwards "B" on her face when he found out she supported McCain. Because political discussions are always the first topic of conversation during a mugging.

We can debate until we turn blue whether or not Clinton supporter Geraldine Ferraro's comments in the primaries that Obama was only doing as well as he was because of the fact that he's black was a racist comment, but it seems to me that even at it's worst Ferraro's comment pales by comparison to the racist crap coming out almost daily from the Joe the Racists on the political right.

The themes that come to the surface again and again are that African-Americans can't be trusted with the vote or they pull shenanigans (Acorn,) that African-Americans are savage animals that can't control themselves (monkeys) and that African-American men are a threat to white women. Blacks with political power are a danger to God-fearing, white Americans.

None of this is new. As we've watched this racism expressed at McCain rallies and through the actions of his supporters it's brought to mind a movie I saw many years ago in college. (There's very little with me that doesn't bring a movie to mind as you can tell by my schtick with this site.)

D.W. Griffith's 1915 film "The Birth of a Nation" was considered up until the 1960's to be one of, if not the, greatest American films. This despite it's patent racism and story centered around the idea that the Ku Klux Klan were heroes fighting unruly African-American mobs in the Reconstruction Civil War South. In fairness the regard the film was held in didn't stem from it's racist theme, but from Griffith's innovative use of editing and production technique.

There's much to be offended by in this film but here's the scene from that movie that left me nauseous.

It should be noted that the NAACP protested the film upon it's release and, just like the racists of today, D.W. Griffith was publicly hurt by the criticism leveled his way. Like today's jackasses comparing Obama or his supporters to monkeys he just didn't see why people would be offended by his film.