Classical Values :: Who's playing the race card here?

Who's playing the race card here?

Intrigued by an editorial titled "McCain plays the race card," I read the piece looking for details.

The evidence for the "race card" consists not of anything McCain said or did, but of comments allegedly yelled by unknown individuals in crowds:

At a Florida rally this week, according to The Washington Post, the crowd got so worked up by Palin's attacks on Obama's patriotism and the media that one supporter shouted "Kill him!" Another supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African-American sound man and added for emphasis, "Sit down, boy."

For starters, where's the evidence it even happened? Despite the omnipresent cameras in the hands of countless reporters and spectators, I have not been able to find YouTube videos which clearly confirm either of these incidents. As to the "Sit down boy" remark, I found nothing at all, and as to the "Kill Him" remark, I found one titled "McCain's dangerous game backfires as nutjobs scream 'Kill Him'", but I've watched it several times and can't make out what is being said:

After McCain asks "Who is the real Barack Obama?" somebody yells something, and McCain appears to grimace, but it's not clear (to me, anyway) what the voice actually said. Can it truly be said McCain heard it clearly?

There's no way anyone can control voices in crowds. This is profoundly illogical, and even worse than the asinine attempts I've seen over the years to blame bloggers for something a commenter might say.

But a disgusting comment can at least be deleted by the blogger. What is McCain supposed to do? Hire goon squads to grab people who make ugly remarks? Hire professional provocateurs to say bad things so that he can pretend to single them out and condemn them?

Activist hecklers are well known to infiltrate crowds in order to scream anti-war slogans or unveil banners, are they not? Yet no one would claim that McCain endorsed the views of a heckler. What's the difference? He has no control over either a heckler or a crackpot yelling "Kill him" or for that matter, someone using any of the numerous ugly epithets in the human vocabulary.

Furthermore, just as anyone could heckle McCain or Palin, any would-be heckler could pretend to be one of their supporters, and yell things that would make them look bad. There's no control over any of it.

It's not as if there haven't been fake "right wing bigots" before. Anyone remember this?

It turned out the "IRON MY SHIRT!" guys were professional pranksters pretending to be sexist bigots. (They ended up making Hillary look good for the crowd, for obvious reasons.)

So, if fake right wing bigots can help Hillary by harassing her, is there any reason why fake right wing bigots couldn't hurt McCain by pretending to support him?

This is not to say that McCain doesn't have loony tune supporters; only that he has no control over people in crowds. Charging him with "playing the race card" because an unidentified voice in the crowd allegedly said something is nothing more than a transparent political smear.