Ya know, there are so many WATBs on the other side that it is easy to forget that not only were all of us humans once WATBs, but we Kossacks can become so ourselves at the drop of a hat.
Big meanie Bob Kerrey has given rise to the latest outbreak of WATBism (WAIT I HEARD THAT THAT SOUNDS LIKE WAHABIISM YOU CALLED ME A WAHABI AL QUADA I CALL BULLSHIT) by trying, pretty inelegantly, obviously, to compliment Barack Obama on the diversity he embodies in his name, experience, and outlook.
C'mon people. Let's leave aside the question of Kerrey's intentions. Or better yet's say that he DID mean to raise the question of whether Obama has ties to Islam.
So what?
Obama is who he is. He is the son of an African who lived in Indonesia and went to a mainly secular school that had some ties to traditional Muslim schooling. (I imagine it was a bit like the experimental high school I attended where school meetings were called "chapel" as a nod to the prep school tradition.) Obama himself has said that such life experiences will benefit him as President, and I believe it.
Acting like there's a problem there is just going to exacerbate the problem. Here as in all things progressive we just have to own the names that people call us and show why they describe us as good.
This goes as well for issues Clinton faces, as I lay out in the following comment I made in the interminable "Hillary Clinton has made me very sad today" diary going on elsewhere.
The same statement [say, a name] can have different connotations for different people.
Some of those connotations can move votes.
Sometimes saying a name is an attempt to move votes by celebrating what the name connotes.
Examples:
"I admire Hillary Rodham Clinton." ["And as she often does I state her full name including her maiden name because it connotes how she maintains her own identity and does not subsume it in becoming her husband's meek helpmeet."]
"I admire Barack Hussein Obama." [And I state his full name because, like, say, John Fitzgerald Kennedy or Franklin Delano Roosevelt, he has a middle name that fills out the story of his ethnicity in a way in which one can take pride even if one does not share that ethnicity but just a general commitment to diversity and heritage."]
But sometimes saying a name is an attempt to move votes by attacking what the name connotes.
Examples:
"Did you hear the latest from Hlllary RODHAM Clinton???" ["That feminazi bitch who pretends like she has a mind of her own even though we know that she is a creature of her evil husband except insofar as she is actually Lady Macbeth in all of this and wears the pants not even changing her name, for Christ's sake?"]
"Oh yes and then there's Barack HUSSEIN Obama???" ["About whom we must all be dubious because he has a foreign name that is in fact the name of an evil brown fascist dictator from a few years back meaning he must be a Muslim terrorist plant because who else would have a name like that."]
Ok. So. Bob Kerrey. I don't like him. Want proof? Do an archive search through my almost 5 years posting at dKos and you'll find me ripping him.
Do I take him at his word that his point about Obama was the former kind, not the latter kind? Yeah, pretty much. Apparently he's been saying this sort of thing for a while. Also, as a University President he presides over lots of serious drives for that sort of diversity.
But leaving Kerrey aside:
If it is wrong for a Democrat to say "Barack Hussein Obama" because Rush Limbaugh likes to, it is wrong to say "Hillary Rodham Clinton" for the same reason. Actually, however, I don't think it is wrong to do either. And I think it is right to note that Hillary deals with identity shit as well.
Hey, just this week apparently, a whole book is being published about how she is literally a cryptofascist. The twisted account of her life and career given there--an account that has taken literally decades to develop--is to the Obama madrassa smear as a nine-inning game is to an at-bat.