In the course of my reading on this MLK morning, I happened upon something that caught my attention. On Talking Points Memo, at the top of the front page was a Google banner ad for three unrelated entities, one of which is "Rockets Red Glare," a site that boldly proclaims that it is selling "Republican Bumper Stickers." This is an odd enough placement for Republican advertising, so I clicked over to look at the inventory. As you can read from the link, it's pretty unattractive stuff, but doesn't go much beyond borderline incendiary. There are, however, several offerings invoking prayer for Obama with a biblical reference that bears closer examination. All of these "prayerful" novelties refer to Psalm 108:8, which reads as follows:
"May his days be few; may another take his office."
Harmless enough, one might suppose; until you read what follows that slyly truncated text. As The Christian Science Monitor observed back in 2009, the cited passage takes on a sinister significance when the thought is completed:
"Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow."
If the Republican Party would argue its complete lack of culpability for the atmosphere of menace that wafts in from the trigger-happy fringe, perhaps they would be wise to have their name removed from this "humorous" novelty company's advertising.
I just received the most offensive phone solicitation from the NRA on this of all days! Even as the FBI was attempting to secure the site of today's mass shooting in Orlando, and the victims and families touched by yesterday's horrific armed rampage in Texas mourn their dead and struggle with a world that will never be the same for them, the NRA's first instinct was to aggressively promote their anti-gun-control agenda. That's cold; really cold, and put me in mind of their Columbine strategy.
The caller said they wanted a response to a single "survey" question. Curious, I told her to go ahead and she played the recorded pitch which went something like this: The UN is trying to eliminate worldwide gun-rights with the specific intention of harming the U.S. There was a lot of hyperbole and invocation against Nancy Pelosi and Congress and I don't remember what all else. Then a male NRA member cut in live and posed the survey question to me which was something like, " Do you think that foreign dictators should be allowed to take away your guns, etc., etc.?"
I told him how inappropriate I found his phone call to be; what an oddly warped effort at damage-control. He thanked me for my time and hung-up.
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