Griper Blade: New NRA Ad Suggests President's Family Shouldn't Get Secret Service Protection

Josh Marshall looks at the NRA's latest attack ad against President Obama and calls the organization "a disease on the body politic." It's a good call. If you want to get more specific, then my diagnosis is leprosy -- movie leprosy that is -- a sort of living rot that destroys the body politic with oozing, festering wounds like the one above.

"There are so many vile things about this ad. But one thing to note is the ad is really only designed to appeal to people who have a deep — really deep — animosity toward the President," he writes. "The sort of people who don’t think he and his daughters should be in the White House and wish him the sort of ill citizens should never wish upon a freely elected head of state."

And that's the key to everything here. Instead of asking, as the NRA's ad does, whether the President's children are more important than yours, ask whether the President's family has received more death threats than yours. Answer: an easy yes. The hypocrisy is not the President's, the hypocrisy is the NRA's. Understanding this fact means understanding that the president's family is under constant threat because of rightwing demagogues like the idiot or committee of idiots who wrote this ad -- people who spend all of their time whipping up a frenzy against Barack Obama in daily sessions of Two Minutes Hate. There's your hypocrisy. The lefty site DailyKos recently reported on the massive amount of threats this president and his family have received, which Gawker helpfully condenses:


According to a super depressing report linked from The Daily Kos, the Secret Service doesn't even tell the President about the threats on his life out of concern that knowing the precise level of crazy out there would distract him from all the important Presidenting he has to do.

A dubious-looking petition site claims Obama has received more death threats than any other President, and while the head of the Secret Service says the organization doesn't comment on the exact number of threats that face the head of the executive branch, multiple news reports have characterized the number of threats against Obama as "overwhelming" and "unprecedented."

But the threats haven't stopped at Barack; in 2009, a woman who knew the Obamas' Hawaii vacation itinerary and threatened to "blow away" the First Lady was arrested a mile from where the First Family was staying. Others have threatened the Obama girls, Sasha and Malia.


Here's an example -- from a mere two days ago.


[Daily Mail:]

The Secret Service arrested a registered sex offender in Michigan after he allegedly made a racist death threat against President Barack Obama and threatened to blow up the FCC.

James Allen Myers, 37, called the offices of the National Geographic and the Federal Communications Commission and threatened the president because he was outraged by the 'filthy sex and perversion' that was allowed on television, according to federal charges filed against him on Thursday.

He allegedly called Obama a racial slur and said: 'I'm gonna hang our... president from a tree outside the White House with a burning cross and a swastika on the lawn.'


So, does the President and his family need more protection than the average person? I'm going to go ahead and answer yes. The NRA can take their offensive, idiotic ad and jam it.

And really, do they expect anyone but the already chumpish gun nuts who follow them to be persuaded by this argument? Apparently not. And apparently they missed the last election -- the base isn't enough to create majority opinion. Who doesn't think the President needs security? What does the NRA think they'll be able to accomplish with this crap? Polling shows their favorability is crashing -- and BS like this is a big reason why.

We may not need to cure this disease. We may be watching it burn itself out in one last, frantic fever dream.

-Wisco