Normally, when I get my daily free copy of the Baltimore Examiner (one of a group of generally right-wing newspapers that are distributed free in a number of major metropolitan areas), I quickly glance at the front page, put the newspaper in the paper recyclying bag, and put the nice plastic bag than it comes in into a container for later use in picking up after my dog when we go for a walk. Were it not for the plastic bags, I'd probably tell them to stop littering my lawn with their rag.
But today, when I pulled the newspaper out of the bag, what greeted my on the front was a full color headline announcing a multipart series by Bill Sammon, also of Fox News and formerly of the Moonie-owned Washington Times on "5 Most Important Things You Need To Know About . . . BARACK OBAMA." Day one's installment is entitled, "Religion Likely Will Play Key Role in Obama's Presidential Campaign."
So does the article talk about the role of his Christian faith in his life? Barely, pretty much in passing. Instead, it's a slightly less inflammatory version of the "Obama is really a closet Muslim" meme. It doesn't actually SAY he's still secretly a Muslim, but it would certainly do nothing to disabuse anyone of that impression.
Its discussion of Obama's Christianity is confined to a brief mention that, despite his questions and sometimes skepticism about religious matters, he finally was baptized and joined Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. But it manages to go into great detail about his grandfather's conversion to Islam, the fact despite his father's supposed atheism, his father was given an Islamic funeral at the request of the family in Kenya, about the fact that Obama's brother (actually, his half-brother whom he never met until adulthood) converted to Islam and gave up tobacco and alcohol, about fact that the public school Obama attended for two years in Indonesia taught lessons from the Quran, and about the admiration that the young Barack Obama felt for Malcolm X (and especially for Malcolm's new-found understanding of racial brotherhood after making the Hajj to Mecca).
As a personal aside, I'm a 58 year old white male, raised in a Baptist household, and a practicing Christian, and I feel admiration for many things about Malcolm X's later life, and especially for the impact that the hajj had on his attitudes about racial matters. Frankly, I'd be more than a little worried about anybody who knew anything about Malcolm X's life who didn't feel the same way.
Prominently feaured in the article is the following:
"He comes from a father who was a Muslim," said civil rights author Juan Williams of National Public Radio. "I mean, I think that given we’re at war with Muslim extremists, that presents a problem."
The article closes with the following two paragraphs:
Obama calls the Iraq war "a botched and ill-advised U.S. military incursion into a Muslim country." He is also protective of civil rights for Muslims in the U.S.
"In the wake of 9/11, my meetings with Arab and Pakistani Americans ... have a more urgent quality, for the stories of detentions and FBI questioning and hard stares from neighbors have shaken their sense of security and belonging," he laments. "I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction."
In the article, there is a little boxed biographical insert headed "Sen. Barack Hussein Obama," just in case anybody didn't know that he had one of those fear-inducing Islamic middle names.
You can read the entire thing here, or in your local edition of The Examiner if you haven't already thrown it away.
Tomorrow's installment will be entitled, "Trapped Between Two Worlds" and is described as follows: "Obama has spent much of his life anguishing over his mixed-race heritage and self-described 'racial obsessions.'" I can hardly wait.
Normally, I'd think they right-wing would wait until he was nominated, if he's nominated, and would then begin to use this stuff against him in the general election. The only I can think is that they're frightened to death of him as the general election opponent, think this stuff will be ineffective by that time, and figure they'd better knock him out while they think they still can. But one thing seems clear to me: If this stuff doesn't knock him out now, it'll be such old news by the autumn of 2008 that nobody will be paying the least bit of attention to it. So I suppose, as disgusting as the out-of-context quotes and general hatchet job are, the right wing may unintentionally be doing us (and Obama, if he's the nominee) a favor.