With Barack Obama winning the Iowa caucuses and giving Hillary Clinton a pretty decent run for her money in other states, the wingnuts are letting loose with all sorts of ludicrous attacks against the junior senator from Illinois. He's a secret Muslim! He's a black supremacist Christian! He's both!
They all come together in a remarkably ugly Investor's Business Daily editorial titled "Obama's Church." In just under a thousand words steeped in racism and bigotry, they mostly attack not Obama himself but the people around him.
For example, the paper accuses the Trinity United Church of Christ of encouraging "blacks to group together and separate from the larger American society by pooling their money, patronizing black-only businesses and backing black leaders." (The church's website naturally says nothing of the sort, instead saying only that members should "pledge to allocate regularly a portion of personal resources for strengthening and supporting black institutions.") And "its dashiki-wearing preacher" Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who officiated at Obama's wedding and baptized his children, is "militantly Afrocentric."
After bashing Wright around for a little while, the paper turns to Obama's background. Sneering that the candidate is "spending an inordinate amount of his campaign time on the Kenyan crisis," they never quite get around to mentioning that his father was from Kenya and he has quite a few family members who still live there.
The paper accuses Obama of backing the wrong person in Kenya's election crisis: "Obama appears to have sided with opposition leader Raila Odinga... Odinga is a Marxist who reportedly has made a pact with a hard-line Islamic group in Kenya to establish Shariah courts throughout the country." (Of course, they provide no evidence for such wild notions.) For good measure, they attack Obama's brother as "a militant Muslim who argues that the black man must 'liberate himself from the poisoning influences of European culture.'"
And - again - they mutter darkly about the candidate's imaginary "Muslim past," a full year after this nonsense was definitively debunked. In a masterful display of chutzpah, they then dismiss their own smears as "not the signal issue before the electorate" right after airing them.
Harking back to the anti-Catholic bigotry that was used against John Kennedy in the 1960 election campaign, the paper asks rhetorically, "Would Obama put African tribal or family interests ahead of U.S. interests?" Their answer is, of course, yes.
The whole article is so slimy one needs to take a shower after reading it. It's nothing more than a laundry list of sleazy guilt-by-association assaults peppered with mindless anti-Muslim prejudice. The editors, who apparently hope that people will see the buzzwords and start fearing Obama right off the bat, should be ashamed of themselves for printing such hateful tripe.
They all come together in a remarkably ugly Investor's Business Daily editorial titled "Obama's Church." In just under a thousand words steeped in racism and bigotry, they mostly attack not Obama himself but the people around him.
For example, the paper accuses the Trinity United Church of Christ of encouraging "blacks to group together and separate from the larger American society by pooling their money, patronizing black-only businesses and backing black leaders." (The church's website naturally says nothing of the sort, instead saying only that members should "pledge to allocate regularly a portion of personal resources for strengthening and supporting black institutions.") And "its dashiki-wearing preacher" Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who officiated at Obama's wedding and baptized his children, is "militantly Afrocentric."
After bashing Wright around for a little while, the paper turns to Obama's background. Sneering that the candidate is "spending an inordinate amount of his campaign time on the Kenyan crisis," they never quite get around to mentioning that his father was from Kenya and he has quite a few family members who still live there.
The paper accuses Obama of backing the wrong person in Kenya's election crisis: "Obama appears to have sided with opposition leader Raila Odinga... Odinga is a Marxist who reportedly has made a pact with a hard-line Islamic group in Kenya to establish Shariah courts throughout the country." (Of course, they provide no evidence for such wild notions.) For good measure, they attack Obama's brother as "a militant Muslim who argues that the black man must 'liberate himself from the poisoning influences of European culture.'"
And - again - they mutter darkly about the candidate's imaginary "Muslim past," a full year after this nonsense was definitively debunked. In a masterful display of chutzpah, they then dismiss their own smears as "not the signal issue before the electorate" right after airing them.
Harking back to the anti-Catholic bigotry that was used against John Kennedy in the 1960 election campaign, the paper asks rhetorically, "Would Obama put African tribal or family interests ahead of U.S. interests?" Their answer is, of course, yes.
The whole article is so slimy one needs to take a shower after reading it. It's nothing more than a laundry list of sleazy guilt-by-association assaults peppered with mindless anti-Muslim prejudice. The editors, who apparently hope that people will see the buzzwords and start fearing Obama right off the bat, should be ashamed of themselves for printing such hateful tripe.
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