Doris Lessing, whom Scanner Emily desires to be when she grows up, is my favorite of all living Nobel Prize-winning authors with too much time on their hands. With the brain of a god and the mouth of Joe Pesci on a bender, she never fails to make the news anytime she even so much as shops.
Lessing recently gave an interview, the transcript of which is being picked up all over, during which she said she believes that if Barack Obama is elected, he will be assassinated.
"He would probably not last long, a black man in the position of
president. They would kill him," Lessing said on Saturday [according to the Independent.] She did not
specify who she believed would kill Obama.
J.D. Regent, a commentor on Jezebel, worries about the same thing:
Literally every time I've been in a public place showing election
coverage, someone in the room has said out loud, "that man's getting
assassinated." And I must say, listening to the call in shows on
C-Span, (two sample calls: "I don't consider Barack Obama a black man,
I consider him a MUSLIM." "Barack Hussein Obama spells his middle name
the same way as Saddam Hussein. Why doesn't the media cover that?") I'm
inclined to agree it is a risk.
Do people really talk about this stuff in public? Talk about a social faux pas.
It should be noted that there were two public attempts, if you recall, on Bill Clinton's life early in his Presidency, and he was barely half-black. That being said, this kind of thinking is paranoid at best, and perhaps counterproductive if anything. Here's what Doris would have to say about all this if she wasn't the one doing the talking:
"Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases, think for yourself."
[Photo: The Daily Mail]
