As an answer to my piece yesterday that asked certain pointed, but far from insulting questions about Destiny’s Tot, Barack Hussein Obama, a suggestion came that I log on to a website that will provide the answers to whether or not he ever was a Muslim—the web-site, independent of Obama’s campaign, supplying what are supposedly the correct answers. My informant, a journalist, does not think it odd that we news consumers have to go to a fan’s website rather than receive the answers from the man himself or at least David Axelrod who is masterminding the presidential campaign—a man occasionally wrong but never in doubt.
The website, for the rest of you who are interested, is very interesting and for all I know positively accurate—except that it goes not come from the original source. It is www.snhopes.com/politics/obama/muslim.asp. It purports to answer an e-mail about Obama which delved into his religion. Evidently an e-mail asking pointed questions about his presidential candidacy is regarded by the adulatory media as (a) scandalous, (b) racist, (c) foul play, (d) sacrilege bordering on mortal sin. If the e-mail was wrong…and we don’t know it is because we still haven’t, to my knowledge, heard from the candidate or an official source…it is the Obama people’s fault for neglecting to lay out the cards on his religion. So rather than me repeating what the web-site says, I invite you to dial it up and get a pro-Obama answer.
Notice I said “a pro-Obama” answer…not the official answer from the Obama office. This is like someone in 1960 replying for John F. Kennedy…not Kennedy speaking for himself… by saying of course he would not be influenced by Rome. Kennedy did finally speak for himself in his address to the Houston Ministerial Society. And I’m going to keep at this until Obama speaks for himself and allows reporters…not the adulatory kind but the ones we have become so used to when directing questions to George W. Bush…to question him in depth. Of course in this gushy emotional, almost teen-aged crush era, to ask to do so would be (a) scandalous, (b) racist, (c) foul play (d) sacrilege bordering on mortal sin, wouldn’t it?
Has it occurred to you that the reason your question was redirected to a site that deals with urban legends is because asking Senator Obama if he's secretly a muslim is the equivalent of asking Proctor and Gamble if they're associated with the Church of Satan, or asking if that picture of the guy on top of the world trade center as the plane is about to hit is real. Both of those absurd questions are answered on Barack Obama's fansite snopes. com also.
ReplyDeleteTom,
ReplyDeleteSnopes.com (you have the URL incorrect in your posting -- it is http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/muslim.asp ) is not a "website run by one of his fans." It is a long-established urban-legend busting site that calls rubbish on the sort of malarkey that whips around the internet via e-mail. I'm not saying that you should automatically delete or dismiss issues that come to your attention through mass e-mails like this; I'm saying that you ought to regard it all with a heaping pile of salt AND DO SOME BASIC RESEARCH before banging your shoe on the table and demanding answers of Obama himself. Neither he nor David Axelrod nor anyone else is required to be at your beck and cll to respond to every rumor that's online. Obama has said many, many times that he's a Christian. His books provide further background about his childhood-- the period that seems to be obsessing you in your inquisitorial crusade. Of course, beyond all that, assuming the "worst" from your viewpoint, that as a pre-teen Obama's stepfather considered him a Muslim, so what? The possibility that Muslims might consider him an apostate has you in a fretful tizzy. You refer to the in-depty questions put to George W. Bush about his past -- questions he mostly didn't answer, that weren't really asked until the year of the election and that you never exhibited the slightest curiosity about, as I recall (long time listener).
It's up to journalists to research and it's up to blogsters to question. There's nothing wrong in questioning the Obama's murky background, though Eric thinks there is. The only source on this is Obama, who isn't talking, only writing autobiographies (ie long political pamphlets). The only other source of Obama's religious nature is Catherine Falsani, who, despite her business card, is no journalist.
ReplyDeleteWhen blogsters question and journalists refuse to question, I wonder what good the journalists are.
Who here has received a Holiday Card from the Obama family? A friend with an affluent zip code received a nice card showing the Obama family. Myself with a middle class zip code recieved zip.
ReplyDeleteThe audacity of redlining?
I think it is more telling that Sen Obama never attended a day of public school in his life, rather than the nature of the private school he atteneded.
ReplyDeleteThe great unifier also (wisely) sends his children to private school, while his constituents suffer with the wretched Public School Monopoly.
Why is it that public school is adequate for the consistuency but not the leadership of our State?
JBP
John asked: "Why is it that public school is adequate for the consistuency but not the leadership of our State?"
ReplyDeleteThe work-around is to send your kids to private school but then have them teach a year or two in an inner city public school. That will provide street cred when they start their own political careers.
Note to Cathy Santo, etc.: Are you by any chance related to Ron Santo? If so, quit embarrassing him--I happen to like the guy. If not, quit embarrassing yourself.
ReplyDeleteIn this country, one can be whatever they want to be in terms of religion. If Obama says he is a Christian, then that's between him and God. Unless someone can come up with hard evidence contradicting his account, then what's the point?
ReplyDeleteMr. Zorn,
ReplyDeleteI believe that any sentient being who examines the Snopes site can readily discernt the left wing bias there.
For all of you Faulkner fans, you mat also want to try http://www.sartoris.com
For most of us, our religion it the biggest part of us. Our religion is our culture our tradition and the core of our core beliefs. Our religion answers our biggest questions, and that forms our minds.
ReplyDeleteTo know Obama's religion is to know who he is, and if he wants the public to believe in him, then I want to know what HE believes in.
Obama's religious history is a mixed bag. I want to know what he accepts and rejects from his past religious training.
According to the Constitution of the United States of America, Article VII, Section 3:
ReplyDeleteOfficers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
I'm a bit confused about your assertion that these are "fair" questions and that Senator Obama is obligated to answer them. Of course, the fact that his childhood schooling has been detailed in both of his books and in several television interviews ALREADY kind of begs the question. I guess though that the real problem is not that the questions have already been answered repeatedly but that refusing to engage again on a tired and inappropriate subject will not give any new ammunition to add to the "Obama is a secret muslim!" Swiftboating campaign.
Ever since B. Hussein Obama was "carpet bagged" into Illinois and funded by big time out of state liberal kooks like George Soros, he has become the darling of the liberal establishment. To criticize him is to be called a racist. To criticize his main funders is to be called anti-semetic and worse. Like NAFTA and the WTO, Obama is being PUSHED ON US AND I DON'T LIKE IT!
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that failed presidency of George Bush has opened the door for Obama to become either President or vice President. George Bush is acting much like George Ryan whose failures resulted in the election of Blago. Were such failures intentional? Many of us conservatives believe they were as we were shouted down and betrayed by people in the Republican party whose intentions were anything but REPUBLICAN! If you don't believe me, just watch George Bush cozy up to the Democrats in his state of the Union Speech! He WILL announce what will be in effect an amnesty for immigration. He will support the boost in the minimum wage etc. Just look how Ryan in the final years swung to the LEFT for the accolades of the MEDIA so as to save his sorry skin.
My political insiders tell me that it will be President Hillary and Vice President Obama..... how sweet!! Imagine 16 years of this swill. Thank you George Bush or maybe this is what you and the neo-cons wanted all the long as you sold out the true conservatives and turned the economy over to the greed on Wall Street at the expense of Main Street. Under your false cannard of "constructive engagement", keep on ignoring our REAL enemy, Communist China who just figured out how to take out our space missle defense..... cheap goods produced with slave wages is more important.
As a paragon of the virtues attendant to religious tolerance, I am aware of the actual meaning of jihad as conquering of the personal demons which lead one to fall from grace: http://www.religioustolerance.org/isl_jihad.htm
ReplyDeleteSenator o will be accorded the same deference as Catholic and Jewish presidential and VP candidates, as well as the free pass which black vacuous liberals candidly receive just for entering the contest as democrats to show symbolically the hopelessness of black political independence in national elections.
The big issue will not be Senator O's religion whether his current Southside Chicago minister OR his possible past links to one of the world's largest poltically incorrect religions. The issue will be look how fast the liberals at the DNC and in the media ditch Senator O for a Hillary/Gov.Richards ticket which, continuing a trend to disenfranchise and marginalize the so-called monolithic black vote, recognizes just like republicans (with Mel Martinez' elevation at RNC) the Hispanic vote potential, and pays homage to the largest growing minority population instead of the largest minority protest group whose votes are already counted anyway!Senator O will ultimately be obliged to suck it in and back the white-lib-Hispano-BillClinton-Emmanual-farce as Daley and Senator jones paper over his rock star posturing to beg blacks not to abandon their first black president and his wife while pining for a real black president , of sorts. Stay tuned.
Ralph W. Conner