"The man now happy to have his Islamic-rooted middle name featured prominently has engaged in the most consequential bait-and-switch since Adolf Hitler duped Neville Chamberlain over Czechoslovakia at Munich. ... With Mr. Obama's unbelievably ballyhooed address in Cairo Thursday to what he calls "the Muslim world" (hereafter known as "the Speech"), there is mounting evidence that the president not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself," - Frank Gaffney, The Washington Times
How do people who write this kind of stupid shit keep their jobs as journalists? I'm not talking about curtailing anyone's freedom of speech rights or anything like that, but who's still taking anything else this man writes seriously after he publishes something as dumb as this? Oh wait, that's right: the 25-30% of Americans who will inexplicably and forevermore believe that George W. Bush was a great president. I realize that there's no law against being this stupid but how do these people even get their driver's licenses being so?
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Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Something Old And Tired Someone Else Said
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3 comments:
You Know JBW. My brother in law is Muslim. I couldn't have asked for a better in law. He's been an advisor to my kids. A great friend to me and my wife. He's never tried to blow me or anyone else up. I wonder if this Gaffney joker ever met a Muslim?
Of course pandering to bigots, homophobes and idiots gets you either a great talk show gig or 50 followers to your right wing blog.
Who doesn't want to be popular?
By no means am I saying that it's bad to be a Muslim MKAGT101, just that it's despicable to imply that someone is of that, or any other, religion in an effort to smear them in the eyes of their bigoted followers.
I have a middle name: David.
David is Hebrew. Deeply so.
I believe it means "beloved".
I'm not Jewish.
Strangely not one person in my entire life has ever said "oh the reason you only use that name on official papers is that you ARE, actually, secretly Jewish" (and thus - by some other absurd leap of non-logic - implicitly un-Australian).
Were Buzz Aldrin or Gus Grissom hiding anything? No they're American heroes.
John Wayne's REAL name (not occasionally used middle name) was Marion. So far as I know... nobody accused the Duke of being secretly female.
At least not to his face.
Further... One of the key points about statements like Gaffney's are the false linkages. No he's not saying Hitler had anything to do with Islam, but he nonetheless feels righteous about putting them in the same sentence without so much as a comma in between, making a rhetorical bridge, and a nasty and nonsensical implication.
Gaffney actual does this ugly bit of association with less egregious prejudice than a lot of pundits (he's forfeited the class to be called even a journalist). It's a trick to engender in the audience a political commonality of position that they might not actually have.
Like associating same-sex marriage with pro-choice. Or gun control with taxation.
These issues actually have nothing to do with one another. Or at least not till someone with an agenda decides they do.
And lastly of course... even if he was Muslim, and the point of fact is he ascribes to another faith (which I personally also do not share)... what of it?
He's American.
ah but... therein is that other association: Muslim and terrorist.
Osama Bin Laden would like everyone to think they are the same thing. So would Hannity, Limbaugh, Beck.
And thus I myself can now indulge in the same games of association that Gaffney is playing, which is shit that has to stop if we are going to have intelligent discourse and truth in public life.
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