This is cross posted at Huffington Post.
The left-wing has to stop being upset about the right-wing using Barack Obama’s full name. Last Monday, there was a Lee County sheriff in Florida introducing Sarah Palin at rally. The event itself was a like pep rally for a losing lineup, chanting about team spirit as the gym crumbles to the ground.
Anyway, the sheriff’s name is Michael Scott. On the video he is a big, effeminate, bald man in uniform, presumably carrying a gun as he says, “On November fourth, let’s leave Barack Hussein Obama wondering what happened.” I watched it wondering when the rest of the Village People were going to chime in.
So cue outrage: Keith Olbermann and Campbell Brown among others have noted that this is not okay to do. Not okay to use that middle name. Brown called it ‘race baiting‘. People at these now infamously raucous and shockingly ignorant rallies are being ignited by the mentioning of Obama’s full name. His middle name is similar to a dictator that the US toppled recently. You may have heard about it a couple years ago. We’ve collectively stopped following the story in recent years. Too much of a bummer. Anyway, it makes news when a viable – ahead in most polls candidate gets called by his full name? That’s political discourse?! News? Notable?
I mean, seriously? His middle name is on his Wikipedia page. How is it an insult? It’s not race baiting. Saying he’s palling around with terrorists is race baiting. And that sound bite gets repeated ad nauseum. The William Ayers – errors more like it – ‘story’ is picked up as an actual item instead of the absurdly desperate claim that it is. What doesn’t get noted is that it’s coming from the same people that say Obama is not fit to lead because he lives in the same neighborhood as Louis Farrakhan. Which is like casually mentioning that Obama has been in an airplane just like the one that flew into the Twin Towers on 9/11. Brutal stupidity.
But when it gets discussed by the media – it gets legitimized then it gets further warped in the collective minds of those that don’t get paid to sit around all day and read blogs and newspapers like I do. There’s a YouTube clip of a woman saying Obama has the blood line to be a terrorist. That’s the next step in the blinding rhetoric from the right-wing: Darkies want to kill whiteys. That’s what Jesus said in the bible.
That’s race baiting!
Making fun of Barack Hussein Obama for having a funny name is like making fun of John Sydney McCain for not being able to touch the top of his head. It’s cheap and near sighted. But when air time is given – attention and outrage handed to those that go there it validates it. It makes it look like there is something to the name calling.
Who cares if Obama’s middle name is like a former dictator that we preemptively invaded because our leader wanted to show up his daddy? If anyone should want to forget about Saddam Hussain – it’s the right-wing. They should be the ones embarrassed by what Obama’s middle name conjures up – not the other way around.
This is what the party of Lincoln has been reduced to – name calling? This is what the media has been reduced to – re-acting to name calling? The answer to both is – YES.
Sarah Palin said that she wants to talk directly to the American people without the media filter. Good, let her. Let her talk directly to the American people and let the media actually filter her.
Cats out of the bag: Obama has a funny name. Republicans are becoming parodies of themselves. And the stock market just closed under 9000.