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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
He has Muslim family connections. His half brother recently referred to his Muslim background. I don't see how it helps to treat being a Muslim as a smear and to try to discount the reasons people believe he is a Muslim. There's more basis to the belief than there was to the false belief that Saddam Hussein was involved with 9/11. Treating them as no different in their quality and failing to address facts is patronizing and damaging to the credibilty of efforts to cleanse public debate. For instance, if someone said, I know Obama's father was Muslim and his half brother sees him as having a Muslim background, simply calling the person ignorant is not a good response. One would need to further explore the significance to that person of the actual facts. Personally, I think we went astray when we started getting politicians who were not Deists, ala the Founding Fathers. The increasingly sectarian flavor to our politics is dangerous. It is now part of our public discourse to discuss people's religion. Obama's is a more complicated discussion. Claiming it isn't and slamming people for caring won't work, now that we have legitimated a popularized religious test for office.
It's bad enough that rumor mongers spread untrue rumors. But it is stupid of Salon to title an article "Barack Obama is a Muslim" when it is decrying rumor mongering. Is it possible that you don't know that most Americans get most of their information from sound bites like your title? PLEASE BE MORE CAREFUL ABOUT THE RUMORS YOU SPREAD THROUGH MISUSE OF TITLES!!!
Joan Walsh isn't stupid. The headlines are no accident.
The intent is to replace journalism with journalsim and stupification.
I know it is hard to believe, for someone who isn't familiar with psychopathy, but it is intentional and best of all, it is profitable.
You can get good money for lying, conning and manipulating the proles and dumbasses.
You just don't appreciate what Joan has done for Salon.
There are a few reasons those idiotic rumors survive, low IQ of the repeaters being a big one. But the main one is that they are a subtext for saying, "There is no f***ing way I am voting for this guy." It doesn't really matter why, because they aren't going to change no matter what proof you shove under their noses.
Of course, those who grab onto false rumors as justification for their vote are hiding their true concern. The biggest one is race.
Like others here, I have gotten those stupid right wing chain mails over the years, and I have already gotten some about Obama. I used to cheerfully click them into oblivion as just another frequency of... well, you could call it Red Noise in this case, on the Internet. It was all fun 'n games around the virtual watercooler, but when I saw Bush rising to power I started writing responses and hitting the Reply All button. I'd always muster facts and logical support for my views, then finish with a challenge to anyone reading them to refute anything I said. In the @8 years I've done this I've gotten 3 tepid single sentence responses- 2 of them basically saying that they kinda agreed with me. Yet the shit keeps coming, and it ain't pretty. From this, as well as from the fact these neanderthaloids got their chimp in the White House, I have to reach the same conclusion as others have here: there are a lot of supremely stupid and belligerent people in this country who believe anything they want who are so immune to facts and logic that they cannot see that the people they vote for are the ones that abuse them the most. I'd almost pity them except that they get to vote, so they afflict their stupidity on the rest of us.
It was suggested we use the same tactics against McCain. Sad to say, it wouldn't work even if anyone was willing to do this- and I for one am not. As Bush was rising in 2000 I'd see him and hear him speak and think "no-one'll vote for him- he's obviously retarded." Silly me- they voted for him not in spite of, but because he's a belligerent dummy. Hey- he's one of us! Most of you reading this might view McCain's bellicose talk, self-admitted lack of knowledge about foriegn policy coupled with an eagerness to go to war, and rages as deficits- but this is so much country music to Bubba and his drunk friends down at the bar.
One last obvious thought here: I will be sooooo happy when a person's religion is no longer an issue. It shouldn't matter whether a person is a Christian, a Muslim, or an atheist- as long as they have good policies and have whatever it takes to get the people behind them to get them implemented. That Obama has to "prove" he's a Christian is as good an example as any of the stupidity I just went off about above.
"But as the first black candidate nominated by a major party --"
"sense that he is the first African-American"
"They know he's black, they know he's a senator"
Let's get it straight! he may be a Cappuccino, half and half, salt and pepper, stained, mulatto but he is NOT Black.
If African in African-American means of Having African roots and American means having White roots, then he is one, otherwise he is NOT an African-American.
Let's call him what he is, American, and leave it at that.
I am extremely skeptical that there are really low information voters who honestly believe that Obama is a Moslem or any of the other lies. Rather I believe there are people who simply choose to "take the blue pill" and believe whatever they want to believe. They know in their hearts he's not a Moslem, they simply prefer to engage in the concensus reality he is because they want a reason to vote against a black man.
please verify the IQ level of those quoted in the article, as believing this,
I am positive it wont exceed room temperatre-in centigrade.
And they are probably married to a close relative.
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 survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
