So far there is no indication that the recent near fatal beating of KATV anchorwoman Anne Pressly in Little Rock, Arkansas, might be politically motivated other than the fact that Pressly is a member of the media and appeared briefly in Oliver Stone’s just opened critical biopic ‘W.’ But given that the daily vitriol heaped upon liberals by McCain surrogates, advertisements, and right wing radio blowhards has already unhinged some to feel they have license for violence against the “enemy among us,” I wouldn’t be surprised if her attack was related somehow.

It was only three months ago, July 27th, that Jim Adkisson barged into a Knoxville, Tennessee Unitarian-Universalist Church with the intent to kill some liberals (and tragically killed two churchgoers). With the election only two weeks away, and supporters of McCain/Palin already beginning to wear the veil of victimhood and martyrdom, I will admit to some fear that the more militant among them will be inspired towards insurgency. It’s not as if the south doesn’t have a long history of fighting insurgent warfare. Normally, I’d consider this sort of associative thinking paranoid… but I guess that recent nearby expressions of hate, like Mike Lunsford’s antisemitic Halloween effigy of Obama, have me concerned.

I pray that Pressly recovers fully I pray for Pressly’s grieving family and that her attacker is caught and that our country soon turns a page for the better. Courage.

(In 1986, a deranged man attacked Dan Rather demanding of the CBS anchorman, “What’s the frequency!? Kenneth, what’s the frequency??!”)

About Aharon N. Varady

Aharon's Omphalos is the hobbit hole of Aharon Varady, founding director of the Open Siddur Project. He is a community planner and environmental educator working to improve stewardship of the Public Domain, be it the physical and natural commons of urban park systems or the creative and cultural commons of libraries and museums. His advocacy for open-source strategies in the Jewish community has been written about in the Atlantic Magazine, the Yiddish Forverts, Tablet, and Haaretz. He is particularly interested in pedagogies for advancing ecological wisdom, developing creative and emotional intelligence, and realizing effective theurgical praxes. He welcomes your comments, personal messages, and kind words. If you find his work helpful to your own or you'd simply like to support him, please consider donating via his Patreon account.

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“What’s the frequency, Kenneth!? (redux)” is shared by Aharon N. Varady with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.