[Jon Henke]
Talk radio host Bill Cunningham called him "Barack Hussein Obama" in February - earning a swift, justified denunciation from McCain - while Debbie Schlussel goes there routinely, using the full "Barack Hussein Obama" name in pretty much everything she writes about Obama. Bloggers, pundits and others join in routinely. The whole thing is shameless, undignified and a transparent attempt to exploit ethnic or religious prejudices.
Let's clear this up: other than the requirements of direct quotes, there are only two reasons for a person to use Barack Obama's full name...
- You are producing a legal record, which requires use of the full legal name.
- You are an asshole.
Really, that's it. And if you use...
- ...Mitt Romney's first name, "Willard"....you're not being clever, you're not "just using his real name." You are being an asshole.
- ...Fred Thompson's birth name, Freddie....you're not being clever, you're not "just using his real name." You are being an asshole.
Nice apophasis, there.
What about John McCain's birth name, "RocksteadfastMcPatriot"?
I've always found Fred Thompson's birth name to be manly and distinguished.
Sometime before Barack Obama's middle name slipped into the realm of the unmentionable, it was supposed to be a selling point of his candidacy. "Well, I think if you've got a guy named Barack Hussein Obama, that's a pretty good contrast to George W. Bush," Mr. Obama told PBS's Tavis Smiley on October 18, 2007. "If you believe that we've got to heal America and we've got to repair our standing in the world, then I think my supporters believe that I am the messenger who can deliver that message."
I always supsected BHO was an asshole
A counterexample comes straight out of the pages of this magazine, from Andrew Sullivan. To paraphrase: Trying to convince a prospective Islamist that America is the "Great Satan" is going to be more difficult when the president's name is Barack Hussein Obama.
You don't know BO!
Kinda ironic unclean language by a guest-host on this blog isn't it? Wonder what Megan will say.
So says Henke, the Christmas Poo.
But how does Willard or Freddie exploit ethnic or religious prejudices?
Acutally Barak is a Jewish name...
so net effect on Islamists is probably not good.
Would Romney rather be called Willard or Mittens? Or what about "The guy that's blowing all of Tagg's inheritance"?
Doesn't McCain have a girly middle name, like Sidney? I once played soccer with a girl named Sidney. So I can see why McCain would denounce middle names. I suppose we should call people by the name they wish to be called. Usually when I get called by my full name, including my middle, it is because my mother is angry with me...
Agreed, Megan makes it a point of telling her posters to keep the language clean as her family (including her grandmother) readers her blog. I would think that a guest blogger who was trusted with her site while she was away would want to respect those rules as well.
"...The whole thing is shameless, undignified and a transparent attempt to exploit ethnic or religious prejudices.
Let's clear this up: other than the requirements of direct quotes, there are only two reasons for a person to use Barack Obama's full name...
* You are producing a legal record, which requires use of the full legal name.
You are an asshole."
I couldn't agree more. Its childish -- the type of degradation that occurs daily in gradeschool playgrounds.
A valid reason to use Obama's middle name is to mock the extreme response to people using his name. Honestly, the reaction to people using "Hussein" has been a little over the top. After all, it IS his name. It's not like people are calling him Barack Hussein Osama.
The truth is an absolute defense for libel, but not for being an asshole.
I think we should all refer to BHO by the name "Barry", Barack went by for so long and it isn't all forign sounding like Barack.
And the greater the outrage expressed, the wider is spread the awareness of what all the outrage is about. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?
This whole thing makes me wonder: If that George Bush DUI lo those many years ago had resulted in the suspension of his license, would we be seeing lots of gleeful references to "George Walker Bush"?
England is a nation of shopkeepers.
The United States is a nation of assholes.
(You realize that all the a-bombs floating around will get these threads deleted as soon as Megan gets back...)
One more exception:
When dealing with people with common first/last name combinations...
George Bush vs. George W. Bush
Johhn Adams vs. John Quincy Adams
I have to apologize for quoting John [ redacted ] Kennedy on another thread.
My bad.
George Felix Allen could not be reached for comment.
Feel free to google the story, if you thought that Dems didn't play race games with middle names.
Anyway, why does he have what is generally a muslim moniker as a middle name, despite the fact that he attends a Christian church (granted that the preachers are fairly indistinguishable from some deranged mullahs, but wahtevs) but is most likely really just another socilist in thrall to the almighty state?
About time someone said that.
Earnest@11:59 finds it amusing that people get annoyed, and it's nice to know that he can get such easy amusement off of exploiting xenophobia. If you called him n*****, now that would be really amusing, no? The response to it that is? (Cause you are all about observing responses and quite removed from the actual nonsense rolling off your tongue).
There is actually no valid reason to use Obama's middle name during discussions on the policies of the different candidates. It's juvenile. And people become animated because usually they are trying to talk about real issues when someone pulls a "Hussein" and carries the conversation down to a level of stupidity.
Also, just knew there would be somebody--again, reversion to kindergarten-- who would say, "Well how come he can say "a**whole" and I can't. How come my friends can pull a soda out of my fridge and you can't? Hmmm.
As though such a mouth of pottery is the apex of blog comment expression.
What ethnic or religious prejudice do you exploit by calling Mitt Romney by his middle name, Willard???
You made the case for Hussein, Jon. But why are you a bigoted asshole for saying Willard? Isn't that just a standard, albeit unusual and kind of funny-sounding, Anglo-American name?
..and if you call someone "macaca," you hit the trifecta:
-you are an a@@hole;
-you are a racist; and
-you are an ex-Senator.
OK. Why, exactly, did his parents give him that name? Is Hussein some family name? Was it to honor some one?
This would, I suppose, show something about the people who raised him, if anyone cared.
But why are you a bigoted asshole for saying Willard? Isn't that just a standard, albeit unusual and kind of funny-sounding, Anglo-American name?
There are different levels of being an asshole, surely, but making a joke out of someone's name being "funny-sounding" is always an attempt to mark that person as the Other and as Not One of Us. Granted, most of us feel that it's worse to do that to someone because of a name sounding black or Muslim- than because of, say, being insufficiently masculine, sounding French (GHWB and calling Pete du Pont by his birth name "Pierre"), or sounding too upper class or hokey.
The basic idea is, however, the same. "This person is an Outsider." A lot of politics is that, though. (George Allen was doing the same thing to the person he called a name even without calling him a name, anyway.)
Plenty of other examples. It's easy to find articles in Louisiana noting how the Louisiana Democratic Party liked to use "Piyush" as much as possible when discussing Bobby Jindal.
Billmax and others are correct that BHO thought the use of his middle name would be an asset to his efforts to position himself as the post-racial candidate. Well, now that he's getting cut with the same blade, we're the a**holes for using it against him? I don't buy it.
And when you call Shekar Ramanuja Sidarth "macaca," you're not being clever. You are being a racist cracker asshole.
And the electorate rejects your racist cracker ass.
George Felix Allen could not be reached for comment.
When Jim Webb apologizes to George Allen for Webb's campaign's use of Allen's middle name "Felix", then we can talk about not using "Hussein".
Until then - no, not gonna happen. Henke can call people "*ssholes" all he wants, but, sorry, the precedent's been set. Middle names are fair game.
Can I still refer to Senator McCain as "Panama Jack?"
Al,
Webb used Allen's silly-sounding middle name to try and associate Allen and silliness in voters' minds. Schlussel and her ilk use Obama's Muslim-sounding name to try and associate Obama with voters' fears of Islmamic terror. I see your point, but I think there's a very substantial difference in the level of jerkiness.
In the 1988 campaign, how many times did Michael S. Dukakis refer to "J. Danforth Quayle"? Did that make Dukakis an asshole? Or was he an asshole already?
SeanH:
My recollection was that Webb and others used Allen's Jewish sounding middle name to try and associate him with Judaism.
I will leave it to others to argue if antisemitism is better or worse that anti-islamicism, but both seem to have an air of assholish-ness about them to me.
SG,
I didn't follow that campaign closely and I didn't catch that angle. If that's the case then shame on Webb.
Can we just agree to call him Barack Cougar Obama?
Rodham.
Rodham Rodham Rodham!
So there!
'Felix' is Jewish sounding? Since when? It's as latinate as they come.
Felix is of Latin origin, and means fortunate.
Which Allen the cracker was not. And which Al the cracker is not.
Of course, the racist Allen campaign would try any sleazy trick to win.
It seems hard to argue that calling Romney "Willard Mitt" highlights the oddity of his name. Neither the first nor the middle name is common. But run both names through Baby Name Wizard (http://www.babynamewizard.com).
Willard was once the 83rd most common boy's name (in the 1910s), given to over a thousand babies after every million born. Only in 2003 did it fall out of the top 1000 names.
But Mitt has never been any of the top 1000 names in any decade (the popularity of Mittie, a girl's name, declined into non-existence by 1945).
Really, by comparison, calling Romney "Willard" makes him sound more like the rest of us, not less (or, more like our grandfathers, rather than not at all like our grandfathers).
To paraphrase Coolidge, there are a lot of them in the country. If it weren't for them, I might not have been musing on 'Sydney' (from JSM). It's sort of like a local writer said. Be sure you're not dressed like trash if you go out and commit a crime. You won't look good on TV. Momma is revealing something, though perhaps not clearly, when she chooses a name.
The difference between calling Barry Obama by his middle name (or including it in his full name) and referring to him by a racial epithet is that the former is, um, his actual name.
I love how Liberals who frequently use obscenities, refer to Conservatives by all kinds of vicious labels, are all upset because someone called Barry Obama by his full name. Waah! Waah!
I've had to live with people making fun of my very unusual name for my whole life. And I'm not even running for office. If Barry is so sensitive, maybe he should do something else.
Why not complain about something that's actually relevant? How about him lying about McCain wantin to wage war in Iraq for 100 years? How about his devotion to racist spiritual advisors (now thare are two!)?
I don't really care what his middle name is, but I'll join him in condemning anyone who uses it if he'll immediately stop using ads that play on emotion or mislead people and start being extremely direct and honest in his speeches.
Okay, it is settled then. Barry O'bama it shall be--nothing scary or foreign-sounding about it.
Sean,
thanks. That clears things up, and, I would think, ought to end the thing. Of course, it won't.
Washington Post
The Felix issue all stems from this, yes is was blatant anti-semitism. Anything else is simply re-writing history. And yes, Peggy Fox is an asshole, and a racist.
Felix the Shat, from as far as I can tell is also both an asshole and a racist. "Cracker" is every bit a ethnocentric pejorative, and is only used as a racial slur. That he so freely slings it about does not speak well of him.
This post is another example of how Obamatons want to have everything both ways when it comes to Obama. He can call himself "Barack Hussein Obama" when trying to play up his alleged international appeal, but no one else can. Similarly, Obama and his surrogates can act touchy and make spurious accusations of racial insensitivity against Hillary for noting LBJ's role in passing the Civil Rights Act, but Obama reserves the authority to lecture America about how racist "typical whites" are.
Obama is in some ways the opposite of another political superstar with an exotic background, Bobby Jindal. Jindal assumed the name "Bobby" when he was young and has kept using it; Obama used "Barry" when he was young and switched to using the more foreign-sounding "Barack" when he went into politics. Jindal converted to America's largest denomination, Catholicism, as a teen; Obama converted to the most radical church he could find in his twenties. One man embraced America, the other embraced and cultivated a radical version of blackness.
I have a new one for him "Barak Vladimir Farakhan Josef Obama" - I think it fits his beliefs to a tee, really lets out the real Barry O.
So is Barak Hewbrew for wolf or lightning - I know it is one but I can't remember which?
A thoughtless and needlessly obscene post?
Open racism and anti-semitism in the comments?
Come Back soon MM!
I think that there’s an easy way to clear up the entire (non-)issue.
Let’s all agree to call Barack Obama by the same name he used when he was sworn into the United States Senate. Deal?
It's quite clear that the Obama campaign wants to downplay any association between the candidate and Islam. It's also quite clear that Obama and his backers are quite comfortable with the double standard of BHO using his full name for his entire political career until he became a viable presidential candidate, at which point forward anyone that dares mention Obama's Arabic middle name must be pilloried as a racist.
If you go to the Obama site you can find sections of the site, graphics and memorabilia for specific special interest and ethnic groups, including Latinos, Irish, African Americans, Asians and others. They even sell Hebrew Obama '08 buttons. However, there are no Arab Americans for Obama materials on the web site, no Muslims for Obama icons, and certainly no Arabic Obama memorabilia.
Somehow I'm skeptical that this is just a coincidence.
If it's okay to have Hebrew Obama buttons, and Irish button with shamrocks, why not Arabic Obama merchandise with a crescent and star?
If it's okay for the Obama campaign to sell Hebrew campaign memorabilia, is it bigoted for someone else to sell materials that demonstrate the tremendous support Obama has in the Arab and Muslim communities?
It's quite clear that the Obama campaign wants to downplay any association between the candidate and Islam. It's also quite clear that Obama and his backers are quite comfortable with the double standard of BHO using his full name for his entire political career until he became a viable presidential candidate, at which point forward anyone that dares mention Obama's Arabic middle name must be pilloried as a racist.
If you go to the Obama site you can find sections of the site, graphics and memorabilia for specific special interest and ethnic groups, including Latinos, Irish, African Americans, Asians and others. They even sell Hebrew Obama '08 buttons. However, there are no Arab Americans for Obama materials on the web site, no Muslims for Obama icons, and certainly no Arabic Obama memorabilia.
Somehow I'm skeptical that this is just a coincidence.
If it's okay to have Hebrew Obama buttons, and Irish button with shamrocks, why not Arabic Obama merchandise with a crescent and star?
If it's okay for the Obama campaign to sell Hebrew campaign memorabilia, is it bigoted for someone else to sell materials that demonstrate the tremendous support Obama has in the Arab and Muslim communities?
Cracker refers to an ignorant racist, and is therefore is an earned description, not a racial slur.
You, skullf**k, are a cracker.
And what of someone who takes a Yiddish sounding nic, skullberg, and turns it into an obscene epithet?
Got a problem with Jews much?
Excuse me, but legally Barack's full name is . . .
Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.
Yet nobody ever uses the 'Jr.'
This comment has being deleted for being obscene, and also, not funny.
Man, if you're going to be a jerk when you mention Obama's name, have some freakin' creativity! Sheesh! Call him "Biraq Hussein Osama"