Thursday, October 30, 2008

Mr. Popular


He's been criticized for being too much of a celebrity, and this picture sure doesn't help his argument against that.

But given that this is a car from Texas, perhaps it might have been better to scrawl out "Obama. Seriously, he's not Muslim." Because apparently nearly one in four Texans think that he is. One in four is a lot.

It just so happens I got into a conversation with my Dad about this issue tonight (shout out to the Big D!). He was all sorts of incredulous at the thought that people think Barry is a Muslim. At some point he said "how ill-informed are these people that they really believe this?"

But I don't think it's an issue of information or ignorance. I get the feeling that these folks think he's a secret Muslim. Yeah, there's all that going to church business and saying he's a Christian, most of them have probably heard that, but it's all just a facade. This guy is just waiting to win and then he'll bust out "Boo-yah suckers! I'm a Muslim! Totally pulled that shit on you! I'm handing the country over to Al Qaeda now, and you can't do shit about it. Mwahahahaha."

It's a tough position to argue against, much like almost any conspiracy theory. You can point out all you want that he was married in a church, had both his daughter baptized there, heck, you can even point out his heavily publicized relationship with that REVEREND of his, Jeremiah. None of that matters, because to these folks it's all a big fat lie. It's tough to argue with that, so I won't. And I'll do you one better, if Obama does make an election night speech similar to the quote I imagined earlier (albeit certainly more eloquent), I will buy all those believers a beer, assuming sharia law doesn't go into effect and outlaw booze before I get a chance.

3 comments:

Catherine said...

The thing that bothers me the most about the whole "Obama is Muslim" conspiracy is that it seems to imply that if-- God forbid-- he were a Muslim that would make him totally unsuitable for being president. How offensive must that be to people who are Muslim? It's a double-edged sword because on the one hand you want to be like "Stupid people, he's NOT Muslim," because, well, he's not, but you don't want to make it would be some sort of deal breaker if he were. It's hard to get "He's not a Muslim, but if he were, how does that make him less qualified for the presidency?" across to people who a)believe Obama is a Muslim and b)are afraid of Muslims.

Morgan said...

Well the "not that there's anything wrong with that" response is the one no one has really touched on with the exception of Colin Powell when he went on Meet the Press. But I was really glad when he did. He just said it, in that matter of fact way that only Colin Powell can. That's why you can still respect that man, even when most other members of the Bush administration seem like idiots.

kgwhit said...

It should not be an issue, but a German-American with the name of Adolf or Hitler would not have been elected dog catcher during WWII.