More About Sathers

To celebrate my almost recovery from the flu, I have decided to update my prior post All About Sathers, a tribute to Sathers everywhere who are most likely not related to me, but share the same name. You can find the original post here. Every day, I receive a report from Google that tells me when the word Sather has shown up. Most of the links are stories about Rangers GM Glen Sather and how he has made people mad. However, every once in a while, I come across something new and interesting. Here are my latest finds.

Sathers in the World of Sports



The headline No Sathers, No Problem naturally caught my attention. The Sather sisters--Kristy, Ally and Kaitlin--dominated the world of high school volleyball in Maria Carillo, California for a decade. Currently, Kaitlin is playing for UCLA where she was named Muscle Milk Student Athlete of the Week in October. Kaitlin is a 6' 1" history major who hopes to play volleyball profesionally after she graduates.

Natalie "Speed" Sather of Fargo, North Dakota is one of 30 drivers competing for a spot with Revolution Racing as part of the NASCAR Drive for Diversity, which apparently is a farm team for NASCAR drivers. Go, Speed Sather, Go.



Glen Sather is in the news again, this time for posting $1 mm in bail for a friend accused of bankruptcy fraud. This story is of more interest to me as a bankruptcy lawyer than because of the Sather connection. The allegations against former Edmonton Oilers owner Peter Pocklington claim that he filed bankruptcy while concealing offshore assets. I don't know how many times I have counselled potential clients over the years that if you do this, you will get caught and you will go to jail. Hopefully, Pocklington will serve as a cautionary tale.

Teen Soccer Star Stephanie Sather






My Brother in the News

My brother, Dave Sather, was featured in a nice article in the Victoria Advocate titled "7 Things You Need to Know To Start A Business." Dave is an outstanding Certified Financial Planner in Victoria. Together we cover both ends of the financial spectrum. Dave helps successful people manage their money, while I help people recover from business failures.
Dave and Carol Sather Straddle the Equator

Sather Bloggers

As a blogger, I am naturally interested in other bloggers. Here are some Sather bloggers that I have come across:

Sathers Learn How to Multiply, which can be found here. This is the blog of Ami-Jo and Brandon Sather of Savannah, Texas, parents to triplet preemies. As the parent of two preemies myself, I found this blog interesting. The posting about RSV (respiratory synctial virus) was particularly poignant. In June 1995, Stephanie contracted RSV while in the NICU at Brackenridge Hospital. It delayed her homecoming by about a month.

Maggie Sather is the author of Southpaw. This is a fairly enigmatic blog, consisting mostly of photos and the occasional poem. From what I can gather, Maggie is a 20 year old artist from Baltimore. Nice photos on her blog.

I have talked about Jeanne Sather, author of The Assertive Cancer Patientbefore. This blog hits home because my mom is a cancer survivor. Jeanne has been in the news lately telling people that she is Sick of Pink, decrying the commercialization of cancer. An excerpt:

This month, like every October, a sea of pink ribbons washes over products from sneakers to snacks. While the effort raises research dollars, it leaves some breast cancer survivors feeling that companies are profiting from their pain.

Judd Sather is a wedding photographer from Stillwater, Minnesota. Some pretty cool pics on his blog.


More Places Named Sather

In my first post, I wrote about The Sather Gate, Sather Tower, Sather Air Base and asteroid Sather 3292. To that list, I have now found Sather Field, where cute kids play flag football in Shoshone, Iowa and Sather Dam near Alexander, North Dakota.

Finally, there is Ann Sather's Swedish cooking in Chicago, famous for cinnamon rolls as big as a baby's head.

My Adventures on the East Coast: Travels with Barbara

While it may not be of interest to anyone outside of my family, I have had an interesting five days in New York and Philadelphia, including many firsts for me. Just a few moments from this trip include eating a Philly Cheese steak in Philly, driving through every small town in New Jersey due to a manic depressive GPS system, seeing two Broadway musicals in one day and driving a vehicle in a Jewish funeral procession. While travelling a distance less than Austin to Houston, I have been in three states and pretty close to several others.

The purpose of this trip was to attend the New York meeting of the Commercial Law League. The Commercial Law League is a collections industry trade group. My firm has been very active in the League and I was encuraged to attend this conference along with Barbara Barron and Manny Newburger from our firm (that meant that 3/11s of our lawyers were in attendance!). I spent most of my time with Barbara, who grew up near Philadelphia and attended Columbia in New York. There are a few constants about travel with Barbara. First, she will know unusual places to go. Second, what ever plans we make will change multiple times. There are various reasons for attending, including nonstop meetings and dealmaking, continuing education and Broadway shows. For me, I plan to take advantage of the educational offerings, attend a few committee meetings, show my face at some receptions and take in some shows with Barbara.

Thursday: A Long Trip Gets Longer

On Thursday, we flew in to Philadelphia. We did this because Barbara had family obligations to attend to in Philadelphia after the conference. Initially at least, this didn't work out so well. We arrived in Philadelphia hours late due to an aircraft that had to be swapped out. By the time that we picked up the rent car, argued with the rental car company about the rates and grabbed some lunch, it was 4:30pm.

One thing about the East coast, 4:30pm is just about full on dark, especially when there is a Nor'Easter in town. The wind was blowing sideways, the streets were slick and it was rush hour in Philadelphia when we set out. Traffic on the interstate was moving at a crawl when "Tootsie," Barbara's GPS system told us to get off and try Route 1. Not wanting to argue with a computerized voice, I obliged. It turns out that Route 1 was a small country road which meandered through every small town in New Jersey with red lights every 50 yards or so. On the positive side, I got to see the picturesque Rutgers Campus at night. On the negative side, I wondered whether I would ever see my family again.

Eventually we made it back to the interstate and things were looking up again. As we headed into the Lincoln tunnel, Tootsie said that we were 2.1 miles from our hotel. The entrance to the tollbooths for the Lincoln tunnel was a cross between a demolition derby and a slow motion cattle stampede. Cars and buses merged randomly trying to find a toll booth which accepted cash, since apprently no one had an EZ tag. Nevertheless, we made it into the tunnel without being smashed and started toward the imminent end of our trip. WRONG. Once we exited the tunnel, it became apparent that Tootsie had no idea where we were. We knew that the hotel was on Seventh Avenue and 52nd street. In a city with a geometrically laid out grid system, navigating this maze should have been easy. However, Tootsie started giving contradictory directions. If we were on 45th street, she would tell us to turn right on 43rd street. Even I knew that you couldn't do that. Our progress was also thwarted because we arrived arond 8pm as mobs were thronging to the shows. It was hard to travel in the same lane for long, since there would inevitably be a taxi or road construction or six fire trucks lined up back to back necessitating a lane change with drivers who don't know the meaning of the word yield. After circling for an hour, we finally made it to the entrance to the hotel garage, but a trash truck pulled up blocking the entrance. After maneuvering around the trash truck, we made it to the hotel and checked in. Got dinner at a deli and went to sleep.

Firsts for Thursday: driving in NYC with a deranged GPS system. (I've been to a New York deli before, so that wasn't new).

Friday: Getting My Head Stuffed With Education and My Stomach Stuffed As Well

On Friday, I was able at the crack of dawn to attend an 8am meeting. Got to put faces with some people I had only spoken to by phone. After that, four 1 1/2 hour continuing education sessions. They were all great, but by 4:30, I had consumed as much education as my brain could hold. After that, I was instructed to put in an appearance at a cocktail party. I spoke to a few people, had some drinks and then prepared for dinner.

In the cab on the way to dinner, we learned that Barbara's aunt had passed away. Her health had been failing and Barbara knew that a funeral was definitely a possibility on this trip. Indeed, we had flown into Philadelphia specifically so that she could meet with family. Still the actual news was sad. Of course, the news meant rapid fire calls during the cab ride to inform other family members and make arrangements for food for the visitation. The death of a loved one took precedence over our prior plans for Sunday. In the Jewish tradition, burial must take place nearly immediately. Because Saturday is the Sabbath, that dictated a Sunday funeral back in Pennsylvania. Thus, we went about our remaining Friday and Saturday activities under a slight cloud.

We went to El Faro, a little hole in the wall in Greenwich Village which Barbara remembered as a date spot when she was at Columbia. Manny Newburger joined us. Had some good paella and sangria. Went to Ferrara's for dessert and ate some things that weren't on my diet. It wouldn't be the last time. After dinner and dessert, I was exhausted and ready to crash.

No firsts for Friday.

Saturday: In Pursuit of Shows

Saturday started slightly later at 8:30, so I decided to hit the fitness center. It was just below street level so I could see all of the people walking along 7th Avenue. It made for an entertaining view, even though the weather was still cold and gray. There were only two educational programs on Saturday, both related to bankruptcy. I enjoyed those, especially hearing from a panel of bankruptcy judges and went to another meeting.

Got out of my meeting just in time to join Barbara and her friend Guy for the first of two Broadway musicals. Of course, this didn't leave any time for lunch (or breakfast--you have to work hard to have fun). They didn't have a ticket for me, but told me where I could get last minute discount tickets. However, I got lucky and bought a ticket from a guy named Chuck outside the theater. He gave me a good discount, but required cash. Fortunately, the ticket was real and I managed to get in. Our first musical of the day was West Side Story. As the story went on, I realized that I had only seen bits of pieces of this before. I was stunned by the blatant racism, which Barbara assured me was in the original. West Side Story is a variation on Romeo & Juliet, so I was inclined to like it. Shakespeare's story of star-crossed lovers defying their rival families translated just fine into rival gangs staking out turf in Hells Kitchen. However, the dancing was a bit too pretty. It was hard to take the fight scenes seriously when the hardened gangsters had been gracefully pirouetting moments earlier. I liked it, Barbara hated it and her friend Guy loved it.

Went back to the hotel. I used what should have been my nap time to work on an article for my bankruptcy blog. Couldn't quite finish it before it was time to attend another cocktail party. Scarfed down large amounts of sushi to make up for not having eaten earlier in the day. Barbara went to this party with me, which meant that I got to meet everyone that she knew, which was most of the people there.

Our second show for the evening was Bye Bye Birdie. Barbara and I both loved it, while Guy said meh (or something like that; my teenage daughter Kristen is the only person I know who actually says meh, but it was something to that effect.). Guy was able to cadge a ticket for both of us for this show (thanks Guy) so I didn't have to entrust my cash to scalpers. I loved the sets and the general mood of the show. They updated it so that it was part 1950s Elvis-era and part 1960s-Laugh-in psychedelia. John Stamos played Albert, the Dick Van Dyke role from the movie. It was a little harder edged than the G-Rated movie version that I am used to. The sweet teenagers of Sweet Apple, Ohio ask Conrad Birdie if he wants to smoke some reefer and want to have an orgy (although it's not clear that they really knew what either meant). It was humorous to watch Conrad Birdie being rescued from the amorous teens by the police and then being smuggled out of town in a dress. I strongly recommend it for anyone who has the chance to go.

We tried to get dessert afterwards, but there was an hours wait at a place called Serendipity that Barbara said had been in some movies. That was too much for me in the cold and the rain. I successfully hailed a cab and went back to the hotel to finish up my blog article, which I finally completed around midnight.

First on Saturday included: buying a ticket from a scalper, seeing two Broadway musicals in one day and successfully hailing a cab in NYC.

Sunday: Sunshine and A Jewish Funeral

On Sunday morning, I went back to the fitness center for another workout. However, this meant that I wasn't quite ready to be checked out and in the lobby by 8:30 as previously arranged. I received no less than three frantic phone calls in 10 minutes (as well as a text that I didn't get for two days) even though I was only 15 minutes late. The need for early morning action was prompted by the need to be at Zabar's by opening time at 9am. For those who don't know, Zabar's is the ultimate Jewish specialty food place. It wouldn't be a funeral or other special occasion without baked goods and fish from Zabar's. Despite my tardiness, we were there by 9:06, wasting only six precious minutes. I learned something else about New York. There is rarely any parking anywhere. My job was to keep the getaway car idling in the loading zone in front of the store without getting a ticket for illegal parking. Just as I was getting complacent, one of New York's finest pulled in right in front of me. However, he did not give chase as I sped away. After circling the block several times and seeing the blue and white still guarding the store, I found a safe parking spot a block away and waited for the signal that would allow me to actually be loading in the loading zone. Barbara and Guy emerged from Zabar's with what looked like dozens of bags of food. We stuffed them into every crevice of our medium-sized rental car.

It is much easier getting out of New York than getting in. There is no toll to pass through to New Jersey via the Lincoln Tunnel. (It is $8 to get in). I am told that this is because they want to encourage people to leave New York. We made it to Philly in an easy two hour drive by virtue of staying on the turnpike which had minimal traffic. As a Texan, I was pleased that I could drive 80 mph most of the time and still get passed. Made me feel at home. It was a beautiful day. The sun was out. The remaining leaves on the trees gave a hint of the glorious colors that had decorated the landscape in October.

Driving into Media, Pennsylvania reminded me a bit of my childhood in Massachusetts. Narrow lanes were bounded by rock walls. Piles of raked leaves lined up between the walls and the street, waiting for the street cleaner to vacuum them up. The comfortable homes under a protective canopy of trees looked like a mix of structures built in the 1970s and the 1770s.

At the house, I met Barbara's cousin's family. I already knew three members of the family. I had driven Gordon and Hope (the parents) around Austin when they were visting Austin. I particularly remember not being sure whether the Bob Bullock Museum was on 15th or MLK, displaying a certain confusion about my home. I also know their daughter Alicia, who is a recent transplant to Austin, having spent time as Barbara's houseguest and a temporary employee of the firm. As a result, I didn't feel that out of place attending the funeral of someone I had never met.

A Jewish funeral is much like a Lutheran one. The Twenty-third psalm, eulogies from family members and a clergyman who knew the deceased primarily from reputation were common elements. Of course, Lutherans sing hymns and the Jewish chant in Hebrew. Other than that, they were similar. After listening to the eulogies, I felt acquainted with a woman I never met.

Barbara's vehicle was third in the funeral procession, behind the hearse and the immediate family. I got to drive our rental car which now had funeral stickers on it. I have often seen funeral processions, but have never been in one. There was also a graveside service. In Jewish tradition, everyone is invited to throw a spadeful of dirt upon the coffin once it has been lowered into the ground. According to the rabbi, this is a a great boon because it is a favor which the deceased cannot repay. It is also a mark of closure.

Afterwards the visitation at the home followed. What to say? There were many guests and much food. The conversation was jovial, although muted. The Philadelphia Eagles were losing to San Diego, which dampened things somewhat. After four days of non-stop activity, I was spent. I went back to the hotel and napped though the evening while Barbara and Rick (another friend from Texas) went back for Shiva.

First for Sunday included evading the NYPD, attending a Jewish funeral and driving in a funeral procession.

Monday: A Little Business, A Lot of Travel

Today has been a calm day. I had a pleasant breakfast at the Classic Diner in Malvern, PA with Barbara and several local lawyers. I spent the rest of the morning plotting strategy and touring the impressive offices of Becket & Lee in Malvern, while Barbara engaged in a field trip to Costco to buy more food for the second and third nights of Shiva. I joined Barbara and Rick for an authentic cheesesteak in an authentic Philadelphia diner. (Eating the roll was not on my diet, but I will go back to being good tomorrow. After all, I went to the Fitness Center twice, so that should make up for a cheesesteak roll and a few sweets). Now I am on my way home. Tomorrow the madness at work picks up again.

So that's it, five days, seven firsts. Life is one big adventure if you look for it.

20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall/Good Bye Lenin

This past Saturday I was wandering through Blockbuster video when I came across a charming film which was very timely. Today is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Good Bye Lenin is a German film which looks at that event from the East German side. On the one hand, it is a story about a son's love for his mother which causes him to go to great lengths to protect her. However, it also is a fable about the ability to re-write history.

In the movie, a teenage boy joins several thousand East Berliners who just want to take an evening stroll without the Berlin Wall getting in their way. As he is being arrested, he sees his mother, who is a devoted disciple of the DDR, collapse. When he is released, he learns that she has suffered a heart attack and is in a coma. She is unconscious for eight months, during which time Erich Honecker resigns and the Berlin Wall comes down.

When she re-awakens, the world has moved on. Her daughter has dropped out of college and now works for Burger King. Her son has lost his job at a TV repair facility and now sells satellite TV dishes. However, Alex the son is concerned that loss of the DDR will cause his mother to suffer another heart attack. As a result, he hides the truth from her, insisting that the family dress in drab East German clothes and pretend that everything is the same. He goes so far as to manufacture fake news programs for his mother to watch showing the progress of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik.

When his mother revives enough to go for a walk outside and notices "Wessies" (that is West Berliners) in the neighborhood, he concocts a story about West Germans seeking asylum in the East. Ultimately, he creates a video reality in which the West surrenders to the East. His mother suffers a second heart attack and passes away without ever realizing that the East has fallen.

The illusion that he creates is overwhelming. He takes footage of jubilant East Germans streaming into the West and turns it into a scene of West Germans fleeing the ravages of capitalism and neo-Nazis. In his version, the wall comes down when East Germany opens its borders to the West in a display of compassion. East Germany becomes a haven rather than a police state.

This is a bittersweet story. The children of East Berlin are ready to move on. While Alex is motivated by love for his mother, there is an undercurrent of guilt that his mother suffered a heart attack while he was protesting. What we in the West would regard as progress is loss for the older generation. Alex is able to triumph by creating an East German reality which never existed. While turning history on its head, he allowed his mother to believe that socialism had prevailed. In his words, he creates an East Germany which lived up to its highest ideals. The beauty of the story is that Alex creates an alternate reality which allows his mother to die blissfully unaware of the changes history has imposed. It is an object lesson that progress often come at the expense of someone else's dreams. It also shows just how tempting it would be to re-write history so that governments do not disappoint, but inspire.

Anonymity and Cyber-Bullying

This originally ran on my bankruptcy blog. I am running it here as well. As a blogger, I am interested in cases about blogging. Recently, I have come across coverage of two cases dealing with people who wanted to say mean things on-line under the cloak of anonymity. One case involved postings which were merely libelous and nasty, while another involved a determined campaign of cyber-bullying against two female law students.

Skanks of NYC

The current issue of the Federal Lawyer has an excellent article by Michael Tonsing entitled "A Fashion Model, a Mean-Spirited Name-Calling Detractor, a Blog, and at Least Four Teachable Moments," The Federal Lawyer (October 2009), p. 10. It is the story of a blogger who wrote five posts about a fashion model under the title "Skanks of NYC." The author also included some sexually suggestive photos of the model. The model, Liskula Cohen, sued Google to find out the identity of the blogger. The trial judge in New York granted this request over Google's objection. The outed blogger turned out to be another woman, who then sued Google for giving up her IP address. In an interesting case of chutzpah, the attorney for the outed blogger compared the right to hurl anonymous insults to the authors of the Federalist Papers who wrote under pseudonyms (but whose identities were well known). Mr. Tonsing concludes his article with a great pun: "Anonymity is not guaranteed. Proceed at your own risk in Cyberia. When is a door not a door? When it's ajar."

Auto-Admit

The other case, which I discovered from Prof. Nancy Rapoport's blog, is much darker and more disturbing. A website called AutoAdmit bills itself as "the most prestigious law school discussion board in the world." www.AutoAdmit.com. Two Yale law school students were subjected to a vicious smear campaign on the site. Some 39 different anonymous posters using names such as pauliewalnuts, Cheese Eating Surrender Monkey and Sleazy Z started a campaign which began with sexually explicit comments and escalated to statements suggesting that the women be raped and killed. According to a Complaint filed in United States District Court:

Two women who have done nothing except work hard in school and show promise of making contributions to society have been targeted because of their appearance and out of spite to be the subject of a campaign of pornographic abuse. Hiding behind pseudonyms and the smug assumption that their carefully-aimed hostility can pass as merely juvenile misconduct, the defendants have worked assiduously to harm the plaintiffs, for the sheer joy of destruction. Plaintiffs, whose character, intelligence, appearance and sexual lives have been thoroughly trashed by the defendants, now seek redress by bringing this action for damages and injunctive relief.

Complaint, Doe v. Unknown Defendants, Case No. 307CV00909, U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut, p. 1.

The statements made on the discussion board, which were outrageous in their vulgarity, are set forth in detail in the complaint. Some of the tamer comments suggested that one of the students had bribed her way into Yale Law School and was having a lesbian affair with the Dean of Admissions, included anti-Semitic slurs about the students, stated that one of them had herpes and had numerous postings about the manner in which the posters wanted to have forced sex with them. The campaign went so far as to send anonymous emails to faculty of Yale Law School and a firm where one of the students had a summer clerkship suggesting that she would harm the reputation of both the Law School and the law firm.

The two students fought back, hiring Reputation Defender, which is an internet public relations firm, and filing suit in United States District Court. In the District Court suit, the plaintiffs sent subpoenas to the internet service providers of the anonymous posters seeking their identity. One such anonymous person, who went by the moniker AK47, sought to quash the subpoena. In an interesting opinion, U.S. District Judge Christopher Droney found that:

The forgoing principles and decisions make clear that Doe 21 has a First Amendment right to anonymous Internet speech, but that the right is not absolute and must be weighed against Doe II’s need for discovery to redress alleged wrongs. Courts have considered a number of factors in balancing these two competing interests. This balancing analysis ensures that the First Amendment rights of anonymous Internet speakers are not lost unnecessarily, and that plaintiffs do not use discovery to “harass, intimidate or silence critics in the public forum opportunities presented by the Internet.”

Ruling on Defendant John Doe 21's Motion to Quash Plaintiff's Subpoena and Motion to Proceed Anonymously, Doe v. Unknown Defendants, Case No. 3:07CV909 (D.Ct. 6/13/08). After weighing various factors, the Court concluded that the subpoena should not be quashed.

As a result of discovery, the Plaintiffs concluded that one of the posters was Matthew C. Ryan, an undergraduate student at the University of Texas. Other identities were discovered, but kept quiet during settlement negotiations. When names started to be named, settlements came quickly. Left unanswered was what motivated the attacks in the first place.

In a bizarre sidenote, one of the libelled students is now the defendant in an action brought by a former employee of Auto-Admit. While attending law school, Anthony Ciolli worked for Auto-Admit as chief educational director. In their campaign to get Auto-Admit to take down the offending posts, the students and Reputation Defender publicly named Ciolli as administrator of the site and stated that he had refused to remove the postings. Ciolli was also named as a defendant in the initial lawsuit. Curiously, neither Auto-Admit nor its owner were named as defendants. Ciolli claimed that he had no control over the discussion board. However, when news of the scandal spread, a law firm rescinded its employment offer to him. While much of Ciolli's suit was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds or for failure to state a cause of action, it remains pending in the U.S. District Court in Philadephia.

Conclusion

The internet is a remarkable forum for the expression of ideas. Anyone can become their own publisher with a minimum of effort and can do so anonymously. However, anonymity can be a cloak for abuse. In the case of the Yale Law School students, they were subjected to nothing less than a gang rape of their reputations and psyches. It seems like a bit of an understatement to point out that online defamers are not the modern day equivalent of the authors of the Federalist Papers. In these cases, the outing of the anonymous authors was a good thing.

I choose to write under my own name and photo. I also don't write anything that I would be embarassed to have my mother read. For some time now, I have moderated comments on my bankruptcy blog. Besides filtering out comments which are really ads for male enhancement products, I have rejected several comments which made personal attacks on judges and litigants mentioned in my posts. As they used to say on Hill Street Blues, "Let's be careful out there."

Dissent and Racism

Recently I overheard a conversation where one person described President Obama as the worst president ever. When I recounted this to an acquaintance, he asked me if the person was a white male over 50 years old. When I acknowledged that this was the case, he made the statement that many older white males had a lot of trouble with the fact that we have an African American president. That analysis troubled me on several levels.

First, it bothered me because it seemed to be accurate in the particular case. Barack Obama has not been president long enough to be the worst president in history any more than he has been president long enough to earn the Nobel Peace Prize. On top of that, he has moved slowly and cautiously, much to the disappointment of his liberal partisans. As a result,the description of the president as being the worst in history clearly ignored reality and was likely the result of irrational prejudice.

Second, the analysis concerned me because I am a white male who is very close to 50 years old. I don't agree with the president on many levels, but it doesn't bother me that he is African American. Whether you agree with him or not, Barack Obama is a remarkable individual and his election was a watershed moment for the country. I hate to think that I would be lumped in with bigots just because of my age and gender. I also prefer to believe that we have moved past the point of widespread racial prejudice in this country (although that is easy for me to say, since I am not on the receiving end of racism).

Finally, the assessment bothered me because it follows a trend of equating dissent from the president's policies with racism. During the tea party madness this summer, commentators were quick to point out isolated incidents of racially tinged attacks on the president and his policies as evidence that the opposition was racist. It is no surprise that racists would turn out at anti-Obama rallies. By definition, racists will object to an African-American president. But that doesn't mean that dissent is racist. While it is convenient to tag those who disagree with the president as racist and therefore ignore their criticisms, that is simply lazy thinking.

The reality is that racism exists, but not everyone is racist. People can disagree with the president for reasons that have nothing to do with the color of his skin. As a result, you have to look carefully at the content of critism before ascribing motivations to it. Criticism which attacks or mocks the person is more dangerous than criticism aimed at an idea or a policy. In the example I gave at the beginning of this post, the claim that President Obama was the worst president in history could have been rhetorical shorthand for rejection of his policies. However, the manner in which it was expressed leaves much room for doubt.