Facebook Poll Asks: Kill Obama?

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

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The Secret Service is investigating a facebook poll (since taken down) that asked if Obama should be assassinated.

The answer choices: “Yes,” “No,” “Maybe,” and “Yes if he cuts my health care.”

Pretty scary stuff. But what’s scarier is how unsurprising it is.

Really, what’s the difference between this and a gun-toting Obama-hater holding a sign that says “It’s Time to Water the Tree of Liberty“—a nod to a Jefferson quote about neccessary bloodshed? (The health care angle is particularly predictable, considering the feverish odium it’s evoked).

But gimmicks like these tend to serve as an easy access point for greater social ills. And there’s something about a poll like this—its hatred so distilled and its medium so pedestrian—that forces you to confront the question: Just how bad have things become?

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GREAT JOURNALISM, SLOW FUNDRAISING

Our team has been on fire lately—publishing sweeping, one-of-a-kind investigations, ambitious, groundbreaking projects, and even releasing “the holy shit documentary of the year.” And that’s on top of protecting free and fair elections and standing up to bullies and BS when others in the media don’t.

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