The Facebook killing-Obama poll

It’s a federal crime to threaten to kill the president, even on Facebook, said David Montero in The Christian Science Monitor. So the Secret Service is teaming up with the social-media giant to track down the “anonymous user” who posted a poll Saturday asking, “Should Obama be killed?” Some 730 people responded before the poll was pulled. This “latest incident of violent rhetoric” seems tied to “a rise in hate speech against President Obama.”

Why is the Left in such a “tizzy” over “some Needs-a-Life Facebook loser” putting up a poll? said Tom Maguire in Just One Minute. It’s obvious that “killing presidents is wrong”—and in fact, it would have been nice if the “typical lefty” had shown the same moral certainty when, say, a film came out a few years ago that “hinged on the assassination of George Bush.”

“With any other president, the Facebook poll might be shrugged off as a sick joke,” said Earl Ofari Hutchinson in The Daily Voice. “But this is not another time and another president.” Obama has long faced an unprecedented “avalanche of threats,” and it’s just gotten worse in today’s “angry, hyperparanoid climate.” A Phoenix pastor is “very publicly” praying for Obama’s death, and all the “danger flags” are stretching the Secret Service thin.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The “Obama assassination poll” is a “significant challenge for Facebook,” too, said Adam Ostrow in Mashable. It was created using a third-party application, and Facebook can’t—and shouldn’t—“be expected to police everything” put up on its site. But it won’t do to have users easily creating “a small national-security concern,” either. The only easy conclusion is that “politics and social media can sometimes be an explosive combination.”