What’s in a name?

During the campaign for the presidency in 2008, right wing media over and over used Obama’s middle name, Hussein. Why did they do this? OK, here’s the evidence for the truth of the liberal condescension: the people who would be persuaded that Obama is a secret (!!) Muslim will point to that name, tie it in to Saddam Hussein, and shout, “See there! What real ‘Murican would name themselves (!!) after an evil dictator?” and, of course, what they really mean is that a Muslim cannot be a real American b/c in their world, all Americans are Christians. (and by Christian we exclude Catholics; if you think not, just listen to high school kids talk about “the Catholic kids over at St. Tims are having a car wash and the Christian kids are selling magazine subscriptions to raise money for the team to go to….”)
When you aim such an obvious bit of stupidity at a group of people and you are a highly paid propagandist, you know your audience. One more piece of evidence that liberal condescension is justified: a short time after the Iraq invasion started, I was talking to a doctor from Pakistan. She said she gets frequent visits from the FBI about her trips to Pakistan (to see her family? Yeah, sure). They ask her why she named her infant son Osama. I am sure that when the Pinkertons were searching for John Wilkes Booth, they asked every mother with a boy named John why she chose that name.
Sorry folks, liberal condescension is justified for these reasons. BTW, there is plenty of condescension on the Right. They think we are hopelessly naïve not to know there is a clash of civilizations going on, not to realize that the Russians are just hiding their aggressive Communism under the guise of disbanding the Soviet Union, not to recognize that our culture and civilization (NASCAR and football) are being swamped by alien invaders, not to see the massive voter fraud as Mexicans risk horrible death in the Arizona desert here in order to fraudulently vote in our election for County Supervisor….. and so on.

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