Uglier And Uglier
Original story is here
A billboard in West Plains showing a caricature of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama wearing a turban and using his middle name — Hussein — in quotes has sparked outrage and accusations of racism.
The sign, located south of West Plains on U.S. 63 across from the Dairy Queen, says: “Barack ‘Hussein’ Obama equals more abortions, same sex marriages, taxes, gun regulations.”
Outrage over the sign triggered West Plains resident Becky Estes to write a letter in Monday’s edition of the Daily Quill newspaper saying “such a tasteless display merely reinforces the wide-spread belief that Ozarkers are ignorant country bumpkins.”
Ya think? Why do these things only seem to happen in the rural places? But in their defense, others in the area are outraged by this kind of nonsense
Lesa Hall, a Democratic voter from West Plains, said it’s not the message she takes issue with — it’s the use of Obama’s middle name and the hand-drawn picture of him wearing a white turban.
“My offense was the stereotype and the racism that I felt that the billboard presented,” said Hall, a teacher at the Junction Hill Middle School.
A spokeswoman for Obama’s Missouri campaign, which has an office in West Plains, dismissed the sign as a distraction.
“Missouri voters aren’t going to fall for these kinds of distractions,” said spokeswoman Jean Weinberg. “The stakes are too high in this election.”
Filed under: Politics
Here’s the thing that I don’t understand. The republicans seem to be leeching on to those things that have PROVEN to be untrue. Just like the lady at McCain’s rally last week that said Obama is an Arab. Or those that are tying him too closely to Ayers. Whatever happened to people looking into these things and filtering the lies out?
It is a fairly common right-wing tactic, namely to establish spaces in which assertions can be made which will be accepted as fact at face value, despite either being highly contentious or demonstrably false. My name for his phenomenon is “truthspace” and they obviously think that that part of the country is their truthspace.
This just makes the Republicans look really bad.
Ironically, if he really was a ‘radical Muslim’ as claimed, he’d be very much against abortion and same sex marriages, and probably quite pro guns.
K-dude that is so true. And, who the hell cares if he’s of Arab decent or not??? He IS an American citizen right?
That is something to think about. They must have amnesia or something?
Well, being Arab “shouldn’t” matter, but would make it next to impossible to get elected as president of the US. Short of walking on water, I doubt even a Christian Arab who is a decorated soldier (eg General Abizaid) would have an easy time getting elected.
Although its a far stretch from this topic, there is an issue at the moment with Muslim immigrants/those of Muslim descent being seen as non-Americans, regardless of how many generations they’ve been here. There’s still some work to be done on their end in becoming indigenous. The exception is African Muslims (or anyone of African descent), who after one generation are accepted as much more American than immigrants from other Muslim ethnicities. This has a lot to do with Black Americans having carved out a space for themselves in America. As we move into the future, I think immigrant Muslims will owe a lot to Black American Muslims for being pioneers.
K-Dude
African American Muslims are targets as well, albeit more difficult. Those who they want to neutralize or intimidate are listed as ‘radicals’ who support Al-Qaeda and constitute a “Fifth Column” of potential home-grown terrorists or terrorists sympathizers. They are being watched and if you think Obama is catching it for his associations to washed up terrorists, you haven’t seen anything when they link an bona-fide African-American Muslim to ‘overseas’, ‘foreign’, or whatever other code words or euphemisms they have for “radical Muslims and Islamists.”
On the point of this blog post, I guess you didn’t see the disgusting “Obama on a food stamp’ where they drew a picture of him next to a bucket of fried chicken, some, Kool-Aid and some watermelon!