What If Obama Were ‘Secretly’ a Jew?
Searching US newspapers on Lexis Nexis for “Obama,” “Muslim,” and “smear” generates 509 unique hits …
There have been plenty of reports debunking the Obama Muslim allegation, but not enough about the racial subtext of “smearing” a politician for being Muslim.
Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting released a report documenting the 12 Islamophobes in US media. The all-star list includes (unsurprisingly): Bill O’Reilly, David Horowitz, Michelle Malkin, and Sean Hannity.
FAIR’s senior analyst Steve Rendall told Brooke Gladstone on On The Media:
If someone was accused of being a secret Jew we’d have a discussion not only about the fact of the matter, but one about anti-Semitism in the campaign. The second part is not happening in this case.
How do these viral e-mail rumors get started? The Nation’s Chris Hayes had an excellent piece last year about the origins of these smear campaigns.
Poke around on the Smearcasters web site here and find out how your favorite talking heads are spreading bigotry and misinformation.
2 Responses to “What If Obama Were ‘Secretly’ a Jew?”
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October 13th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Good for CP for writing about the general lack of attention paid by major outlets to the total level of bigotry at play here. I’ve heard many terms applied in these discussions, such as “xenophobia,” and read many indignant corrections to the smears (and indignant they should be). Very rarely have I seen outlets discuss, much less clearly label, the bigotry at play here.
October 14th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Did you catch McCain’s “defense” of Obama when a woman in his audience said she didn’t trust Obama because he was an Arab?
McCain said “No. He is a decent family man and citizen.” As opposed to Arabs who are not decent, etc.?
McCain is a shameless racist.