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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Some people claim Obama is a Muslim, despite all the pork sausage he's eaten on TV at diner campaign stops.
Some people claim Mikhail Khodorkovsky is an impoverished political dissident in jail merely for criticizing Putin, despite the fact that his actual charges were corporate fraud and tax evasion and several of his former employees and business partners ended up dead from contract killings after they got in his company's way.
Yup, you can read all kinds of things on the Internet.
I think many people like to line the universe up with their politics. If information doesn't fit the politics, then it has to be wrong.
So people whose politics don't line up with Obama's ignore the fact that he eats pork sausage on TV -- therefore he cannot be Muslim.
And people who (rightfully) feel appalled by Putin's politics look at Khodorkovsky with an absolutely uncritical eye, either ignoring all the dead former employees and business partners, or coming up with elaborate conspiracy theories to explain them away.
The Internet is not going to clear anything up for people who feel satisfied that their politics tells them everything they need to know about the world.
Cain killed his brother Abel. Cain was the first man to ever murder another man. McCain has Cain in his name. I think he's a secret murderer.
Hey Juliebird,
You left out on your entertaining list that some people believe that "male enhancement" products work!
Let's face it. Some people are just plain fucking stupid. Some people are paranoid, some people may be smart, but don't bother to inform themselves properly. They all get to vote too. Listen, I know someone who voted for Bill Clinton because he was good looking. I mean, what can you say to that?
I still haven't quite figured out how to fight this, really. What the republican types are trying to do is build the "where there is smoke, there must be fire" kind of meme by putting out as much and as varied smoke as they can. Blowing it up our fundaments, really.
To let it go is to let it multiply, to allow that yes, there might just be a fire, and while it may not make much of a difference for the cerebraly challenged hard-core rep yokel base, it may very well scare of nervous elderly church ladies who might otherwise take a brave step. On the other hand, getting out there and fighting it, just adds more smoke and noise, making it more likely that you are going to frighten the nervous elderly church lady.
There is always the Rove strategy. Never forget, Bush won on the who would you have a beer with ticket; a lot of these folks are going to be pretty nervous about sitting down and having a beer with someone as exotic as Obama. Much as they hate the current admin, and it is pretty clear most Americans do, they are being asked to make a pretty freaking big leap to go with Obama, and the scarier that leap can be made to look, the better McCain's chances are, at least on the guy you'd want to have a beer with platform.
I hate to say this, but slimeing and smearing McCain, to make him at least as scary to have a beer with, might be the way to go. It wouldn't be hard to do, what with the obvious early stage Alzheimer's and all that, as evidenced by the recent position swings, rages, confusion, lapses, and general physical appearance of old age.
But that would be a Rove strategy, not an Obama one, so what are we to do?
No no no no no no that won't do at all.
Oh geez!!!!!!!! I just detest the ignorance of the naive masses!!! Why is it that our citizenry is so malleable? And unable to think critically? Do not say it is because we watch too much TV. I think we are just plain arrogant and lazy in our capacity to question and wonder! (Hmmm....I guess that is related to watching too much TV!) And what is the "reward" when we finally do see that the "Emperor has no clothes?"
Despair and fantasies of moving to New Zealand!!
There are a couple of aspects to this hate Obama situation, Salon and the repub religious right.
Salon is helping to perpetrate this anti Obama idea so it has to figure out where it is going. I see this as primarily being a 'Joan Walsh' problem. Her Hillary Clinton biases continue to come through. Her religious bias may be also 'showing'.
The religious right and it's Repub party is the other source of this hate for Obama. There is no way to stop them. Obama should try to get them to comprehend but it will prove to be a losing cause.
The Pro-Life and Family Values group will prove to be unreachable, in the long run. Their hate is everywhere. Russert was a thinly veiled version of them. MSNBC is full of them. Their hate bespeaks their mindset.
Cracking any of these groups will prove to be impossible.
...a congregation in Arkansas whose pastor preaches that Obama is the anti-christ...
I'd love to see their "maths" where they make Barack Hussein Obama II "add up" to 666.
Unlike, say, Ronald Wilson Reagan (6 letters in each of his names! 666!!!)
Endless fun for the intellectually challenged.
Canuckistan Bob, while reading these letters, I've been thinking the same thing: Let's start some chain emails about McCain. As you said, he clearly has early symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, like Reagan did. (But we probably don't want to point that out, because of the widespread belief that Reagan was a great president.)
Also for the chain emails, the story about how McCain left his wife who waited faithfully for him during his long imprisonment in Viet Nam, after she was terribly disfigured in an auto accident. And then he married the "cunt" who's very pretty and so much younger than him, and also brought along a big pot of inherited wealth.
His flip-flops abound, to suit the political winds that blow.
What else?
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The Maine fight was supposed to be the dress rehearsal for repealing California's Prop. 8 -- but gay marriage lost
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
