Frightening anti-Obama encounter in Oconee County

Just goes to show idiots shop at Lowes as well as Home Depot. I would have dialed the Oconee County Sheriff's Department immediately or at least taken pictures of this poor fool and posted them on the internet. Myrna should have told the management at the store at the very least. I would well imagine that the Secret Service and the FBI would have wanted to know the identity of this man. Making a threat on a Presidential candidate's life is a felony.

Woven brightly,

Daniel J. Matthews, Jr.

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To: oconee@yahoogroups.com
From: herbwest@bellsouth.net
Date: Tue, 9 Sep 2008 19:59:25 -0400
Subject: [oconee] Frightening anti-Obama encounter in Oconee County

All:

 

I wanted to share with you a very frightening encounter Myrna had this afternoon with an ardent anti-Obama individual.  She had stopped at Lowe's (on Epps Bridge) to buy a few things, and the encounter happened as she was getting back into her car in the parking lot.  Here's what she told me in the email she sent me at work:

 

Well, I think I just got a glimpse of what we can expect over the next couple of months!  As I was getting into my car in the Lowe's parking lot, a man got out of his pickup truck parked to my right, raised his fist, and shouted "Death to Obama!  The Muslim shit! Death to 'im!"  He then walked quickly in front of his truck toward the store, but came back and got back into the truck and was fiddling with something in the front seat.  I looked up when he started shouting, but I didn't say anything.  I calmly got into my car, took my time, and pulled out forward so that he could see the bumper sticker again.  I didn't really feel threatened, but I did—and still do—feel sad that there are people like him out there.  If there's one man like that out there, there are others.  We just need to be aware and keep our cool.  And I did watch my rearview mirror on the way home just to be sure he wasn't following me.  And I checked the right side of the car when I got home to see if he had damaged it.  (He hadn't.)

 

She told me later she didn't think about backing out and writing down his tag number (and seeing what county he was from).  Clearly, what he said was a "terroristic threat."  But not something that could easily be pursued further because it would simply be a case where he would probably deny saying that, and then later really taking it out on her.  She didn't want to say anything to him for fear of raising his ire even more, although she did wonder if he claimed to be a Christian.  Even though, from our perspective, his statements are contradictory to what we know as Christianity, it probably fits with his own narrow, fundamentalist version (just like Christians of old who mounted the Crusades against the Moslem "infidels," or the current fundamentalists people whose fervent "pro-life" stance permits them to outlaw all abortions while they ardently support capital punishment, even if a few innocents become "collateral damage").

 

I wonder if those of you who are out there "in the trenches" for the Obama campaign, whether campaigning door to door or on the phone backs, have encountered anything this scary, or worse.

 

Herb

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