I am so shocked that I haven't seen this on Kos, that I felt compelled to finally post a diary entry.
Tavis Smiley criticized Obama's failure to appear at the State of the Black Union forum, and he gets inundated with hate mail and death threats.
From Washington Post's The Trail:
Tavis Smiley, the bestselling author of the "Covenant With Black America," is in a world turned upside down. He said he's being "hammered," "barbecued," and is "catching hell" from black Americans for suggesting that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) made a major mistake by declining to speak at the State of the Black Union event that Smiley plans to host next week in New Orleans.
"There's all this talk of hater, sellout and traitor," Smiley said to me in a telephone interview. Smiley even mentioned getting death threats, but wouldn't elaborate. He said his office has been flooded with angry e-mails. "I have family in Indianapolis. They are harassing my momma, harassing my brother. It's getting to be crazy," Smiley said.
Is this how we want to select a president? Count me out of this "movement."
Note on correction after the jump.
Note: I corrected the misspelling of Smiley's name. Not sure why I threw the T in there, except for recent allergies being on my mind.