Thursday, February 28, 2008

Change of Subject - Observations, reports, tips, referrals and tirades | Chicago Tribune | Blog


Eric Zorn: Middle-name calling is way over the line
: "Obama doesn't use his middle name in his public life, and it's not necessary for anyone else to use it to distinguish him from other Barack Obamas. The only reason to say 'Barack Hussein Obama,' as radio talk show host Bill Cunningham did repeatedly Tuesday in warming up a John McCain campaign rally in Cincinnati, is to try to excite anti-Muslim, anti-Arab prejudices (though Obama is neither Muslim nor of Arab descent) and not so subtly suggest that Obama's actually a slippery foreigner."
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According to liberal columnist Eric Zorn (and John McCain!), using Barack Obama's middle name in public is now forbidden.

OK: George Walker Bush, William Jefferson Clinton, George Herbert Walker Bush, Ronald Wilson Reagan, Richard Milhous Nixon, Lyndon Baines Johnson, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Not OK: Barack Hussein Obama.

Please make a note of this. We wouldn't want you to get a ticket from the Language Police.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

So does this mean that Jon Stewart's gonna get in trouble for making a joke about this during the Oscars?

I doubt it, but it does make you wonder why Barack can't just publicly address this and put the nonsense over his middle name behind him. He said in the 2004 Keynote address it Huissein means "blessed" and just because it will eternally be linked with the name of a dictator that the United States put into power as their puppet in the Middle East and kept him in power until they grew sick of him, invaded him, deposed him and executed him, that shouldn't change the meaning of the word.

Anyway, love your Poly Sci 101 class!

Thanks,
Chris Hollander.

Evan McKenzie said...

Chris:
You have great political instincts. I just posted an article Obama published in Pakistan where he does just what you suggest. Have you considered becoming a campaign manager?

Anonymous said...

I'd consider that, but I think I have to get my bachelor's first. Maybe for his 2012 reelection perhaps...

Also, I found out I was wrong. Barack means "blessed." Hussein means "good, small handsome one."

Sorry for that.