tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3980421295592818922.post4706213156439628193..comments2023-10-23T14:15:29.331-07:00Comments on Shallow Cogitations: This Is Journalism?Hank Greerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15243840232233423724noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3980421295592818922.post-84289040960119227162012-10-21T18:40:34.720-07:002012-10-21T18:40:34.720-07:00The second paragraph you quote from Western Journa...The second paragraph you quote from Western Journalism is not so different than many reviews of Obama's book "Dreams From My Father," a book in which Obama himself details his struggles with racial (and other) identity issues. <br /><br />In 2010, Melissa Harris-Perry wrote in the (leftist) Nation:<br /><br /><i>When Hillary Clinton held a significant lead among black voters, media outlets regularly questioned if Obama was "black enough" to earn African-American electoral support. When the Rev. Jeremiah Wright dominated the news cycle, the question shifted to whether Obama was "too black" to garner white votes. By the final months of the campaign, Obama's opponents charged that he was a noncitizen, a Muslim and a terrorist. In less than two years a single body had been subjected to definitions ranging from insufficiently black, to far too black, to somehow foreign and frightening.</i><br /><br />At least conservatives talk about the significance of Obama's childhood years in Indonesia. But, conservative see the significance of Obama's Indonesian experience as somehow welding his black identity with a Muslim identity. <br /><br />Indonesia more likely marked a divergence of between Obama's sense of black and Muslim identities. In Indonesia, Obama at least passively rejected Islam, perhaps because he felt it had rejected him. Muslim kids taunted Obama in Indonesia, and they taunted him because of his color. Obama did not have an easy integration into Indonesian society.<br /><br />Obama has always de-emphasized his Asian, Muslim step-father who helped raise him, and instead emphasizes the biological father that he never knew. Obama also began to emphasize Obama Sr.'s tribal history, and ignored the role of Islam in that history. In a sense, Obama twice rejected Islam, in Indonesia, and in Kenya. <br /><br />Obama chose to become a member of a black Christian church that emphasized the role of Christianity in black American struggles for freedom. He chose a Christian African American wife, chose to work in black neighborhoods, and chose a house in a mixed neighborhood. He chose only the African-American box on the census. He himself describes these choices as affirming a Christian African American identity for himself, and, particularly in his choice of emphasis, a rejection of past identities. As an adult, he is a black man with white and Asian relatives, and emphatically not a Muslim. <br /><br />Obama's choices and autobiography provide an opening for the bizarre claims by conservatives like Dinesh D'Souza that he is some kind of sleeper Muslim or revolutionary. The obsession with Obama's biological father starts with Obama himself. <br /><br />The liberal attack of the conservative interpretation is even more reductive. Liberals no longer talk about Indonesia, or Kenya, or the role of Obama's white grandparents, or the simple fact that white Anne Dunham had a son who "looked like Trayvon" --not to mention provided Obama with both his link to Obama Sr. and John Punch.<br /><br />Liberals also refuse to discuss Obama's killing of noncombatants with drones. They won't discuss that Obama chose to have a 16 year old male US citizen killed. They won't discuss that Obama has claimed the power of indefinite detention. They won't discuss that Obama has refused to prosecute torture..<br /><br />And, most of all, liberals won't talk about what Obama's victims have in common: they are Muslim. Liberals discussed these issues when the President was white. Liberals loudly suggested that George Bush's brand of Christianity made him more likely to wage wars in Muslim countries and deny the rights of Muslims. <br /><br />Does Obama's personal history of ambivalence toward Islam pre-dispose the President to see Muslims as having less-than-full human rights? Is it payback time for those Indonesian taunts?<br /><br />Does Obama's own brand of African American Christianity predispose him to discriminate against Muslims?<br /><br />Is Obama a traitor or a victim? <br /><br />Or, something else entirely.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3980421295592818922.post-8818283692030694532012-10-20T10:07:27.938-07:002012-10-20T10:07:27.938-07:00I wonder how the site would spin a certain state ...I wonder how the site would spin a certain state representative brandishing a firearm in his pickup truck, threatening another driver (in front of witnesses) in what the Spokane Police department called a road rage incident. Then again... I think that I already know the answer to that one.Stephenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07081927514870722367noreply@blogger.com