Obscanity: You'll know it when you see it

So it looks like it’s not enough to call Obama by his first name – radical wingnuts have started calling him “Barack Hussein Mohammad Obama.” I am not sure if they are just trying to make some kind of “subtle” point, or if they really believe that his middle name is Hussein Mohammad. Either way, they’re delusional. The name “Mohammad” appears nowhere in Obama’s name, and the only reason “Hussein” is in there is that he was named after his father, Barack Hussein Obama.

By the way, let’s look at that name, Hussein. What is so wrong with that name, other than the mere coincidence of it being connected to Saddam Hussein? There are plenty of patriotic Americans who have names like Hussein, Hasan, Huseyn, etc. Are you going to point fingers and say that every single person in this country whose last name is McVeigh is a domestic terrorist, or that every person named Adolph, Adolf, Adolfo, or any similar derivative might as well just come out as a Nazi right now? Perhaps the opposite is true and every person named Moses is a prophet, and everybody named Albert is a genius.

By the way, might I remind people that King Hussein of Jordan was a friend of Yitzhak Rabin (he even spoke at his funeral), and was one of the first leaders of an Arab nation to actually make peace with Israel? If we have to call Barack Hussein Obama by his full name, who is to say the inference people make shouldn’t be that he is somehow connected to THAT Hussein instead of the more unfortunate comparison to the Iraqi dictator?

Words are tricky things, “my friends,” but they’re not opaque. If you’re going to start trying to use word tricks to turn people’s opinions, be prepared for people to see right through them.

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