The Race Rapier

Someone asked me yesterday to describe myself in three words. One of the words I offered was "political." It is in my blood! My Dad was always embroiled in one political issue or another while I was growing up and seems to have passed this gene along.

And I have worked for both parties over the years, with some modicum of success, but more importantly, direct contact with those elected gave me more insight into the workings of government. I also found myself on both sides of the receiving and taking fence of medical and research funding.

Now here we are in the mad race to the finish line and race is surfacing faster than any other bullet in the woods. We have an economy that is pitiful, wars, turmoil, discord, disbelief about our country's leaders, but we are back to race.

Last night the television ads on Pennsylvania stations for Senator McCain hammered home the implication that Senator Obama can't be trusted. These ads ran every commercial break. The power of suggestion is strong, and the power to persuade palpable.

If the Senator from Illinois does not win this election, yes, it will be in large measure because of race.

More than Pens

While some may find it funny, others strange, still others electrifying, and a few ridiculous, I am finding it dangerous.

Dangerous and frightening, reminiscent of the 1960s, strangely like a Rod Sterling short in black and white, and it makes my blood boil, my heart pound and my eyebrows wrinkle up in my forehead.

What is the McCain-Palin ticket thinking of when they ramble rouse and incite a crowd?

And what is McCain up to with his preposterous invented slogans about finance, health care, the environment and the Iraqi War?

One week before Bobby Kennedy was killed at the Ambassador Hotel, I was in that dining room enjoying the company of a couple of dozen physicians who had come together, under my direction, to discuss diabetes. We all came away sated and pleased with the outcome of the symposium. Then we choked on our prime rib when we realized seven days later that there by the grace of!

I remember November 1963 and hearing the blaring radio on 43rd Street announcing, "The President was shot. The President was shot."

I can feel the pain in my chest when I remember the day Martin Luther King was assassinated and how I ran from the Academy of Medicine on 103rd Street through the Park to escape the pain of another public death.

Is Sarah Palin, consciously, attempting to set the world stage for another assassination? Is she that stupid, corrupt, miserable, uninformed, unintelligent, petty, vengeful, that she can't see that inciting is tantamount to calling for murder? Doesn't she watch Law & Order? Does she realize that instigating is as good as pulling the trigger?

I fear for us! I fear for us! I fear for Senator Barack Obama!


And after I wrote this, I read a short piece in which Senator Biden suggests that Palin-talk is mildly dangerous.