Cynics Unlimited

The initial media love affair with Barack Obama was doomed to have a short shelf life, but even a cynic couldn’t have predicted he’d be savaged so quickly.

Fox News drew first blood with a TV segment accusing Obama of hiding his Muslim heritage and in particular the fact that he was educated in an Indonesian Madrassa for 4 years.

The clip suggests that supporters of rival Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s are primarily responsible for probing Obama’s Islamic past, a notion that many journalists and bloggers (present company included) initially accepted as fact; however, an “anonymous source” was the closest anyone ever got to pinning the attacks directly on Clinton.

Conservative strategists were undoubtedly hoping to catalyze this potential chasm within the Democrat party, not only because it would put the party at war with itself but because it could permanently weaken support from one of the Democrats’ strongest voting blocs – black voters. Blacks would be far more suspicious of the “good guys” if they attacked Barrack’s name (his middle name is Hussein and his last name rhymes with Osama - geddit?), religion and most importantly race. Combined with his overly progressive viewpoint -considerably to the left of any president elected since Carter- and lack of experience, Barack Obama (or more accurately his strife) could have been the best thing to happen to the Republicans for the 2008 election.

To that extent, the Republicans have wisely avoided any direct scrutiny of the half-black Muslim, hoping that faux-tolerant Democrats would draw first blood. Alas, the Republicans cannot control their conservative grassroots and ideological supporters, who jumped quickly on the Fox report and fiercely attacked Obama for WHAT he is (black, formerly Islamic, in possession of an Arabic name) rather than who he is (progressive, not particularly forthcoming with his platform). The attacks neatly conformed to every negative conservative stereotype:

And while Obama may not identify as a Muslim, that’s not how the Arab and Muslim Streets see it. In Arab culture and under Islamic law, if your father is a Muslim, so are you. And once a Muslim, always a Muslim. You cannot go back. In Islamic eyes, Obama is certainly a Muslim. He may think he’s a Christian, but they do not
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So, even if he identifies strongly as a Christian, and even if he despised the behavior of his father (as Obama said on Oprah); is a man who Muslims think is a Muslim, who feels some sort of psychological need to prove himself to his absent Muslim father, and who is now moving in the direction of his father’s heritage, a man we want as President when we are fighting the war of our lives against Islam? Where will his loyalties be?
Is that even the man we’d want to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency, if Hillary Clinton offers him the Vice Presidential candidacy on her ticket (which he certainly wouldn’t turn down)?
-Debbie Schlussel

Black, stupid or both: that’s your only excuse for getting excited about Barack Obama. And they’re pretty lame excuses. “He’s so well spoken!” “He’s so handsome.” You sound like my grandma. Why not toss in “He’s a credit to his race!” while you’re at it? (PS: white guilt counts as “stupid”)
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I’ll be repeating this a lot during the next few years, so get used to it: there is nothing “compelling” about a black man impregnating a white woman. In more than one Toronto neighbourhood, that’s what they call “Saturday night.”
-Kathy Shaidle (Relapsed Catholic)

“His father is Kenyan, his mother was white - a charismatic fresh face breaks the race barrier as America’s first African-American presidential candidate”! Or so one would think, based on media coverage. Al Sharpton * must be so pleased.
-Small Dead Animals

Without the political martyrdom provided by crude and bigoted personal attacks, Barrack’s candidacy would have faded long before the final vote took place. Like Canadian Liberal Party hopeful Michael Ignatieff, Obama’s presentation is slick and his forward-looking image beneficial to modern-day liberals; however, like Ignatieff, Obama is inexperienced and similarly would have made a fatal faux pas when forced to stray from niceties to spell out his actual platform. Furthermore, his pockets and political links within the Democrat are not nearly as deep as Clinton’s and he would have at best been offered a shot at vice-president.

Instead, due to the negative focus on his demographic traits, Obama’s candidacy will turn into a referendum on how far America has progressed in terms of race relations and religious tolerance. American culture has been traditionally kind to its virtuous underdogs, and the sympathy vote could carry Barack Obama into a close heat with the comparatively unlikable Hillary Clinton - if not to a victory. All he has to do now is keep smilin’

H/T: Waking Up On Planet X