CBS news posted the following video today of a man at a Sarah Palin rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. He appears to be holding a Curious George doll with an Obama sticker placed on it. Once he realizes his actions have been caught on camera, he ditches the Obama sticker and gives the stuffed animal to a young child in front of him.A YouTube channel, Morrill Majority, posted this following video of the same "gentleman" waiting in line before the event.
Finally, we have the following video posted by TheUptake.org on their YouTube channel. A supporter at a McCain event in Lakeville, Minnesota said, "Obama is an Arab." To McCain's credit, he corrected the woman.
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The last clip is upsetting on several levels. So what if Obama was an Arab? Would that make him less of an American? And less of a human? I fear what the answers would be to those questions in many parts of this country.
Furthermore, Obama is not an Arab, he is the son of an American mother and a Kenyan father. The above woman's ignorance of these facts worries me that she has gotten her information about Obama from right-wing talking heads rather than her own research.
I suppose that would be too much to ask of an American though, thinking on his or her own.
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1 comments:
The woman's comment is pretty telling, in that it appears in some parts of this country, "Arab" has become synonymous with "Muslim" which one could even posture has become synonymous with "terrorist." Obviously, this couldn't be further from the truth. Not only is Obama not an Arab (which is typically defined as someone from an Arabic speaking country, or a descendant of someone from one), he is not even Muslim, having attended a Catholic school and public schooling while living in Indonesia, and having practiced Christianity for the better part of his adulthood. But, as Eric points out... so what if he was Muslim. It does not transfer that he is thus a terrorist or sympathetic to the fundamentalist factions of Islam, just as being Christian doesn't make you a right-wing evangelist.
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