The Great Underground Obama Smear Campaign

Apparently the Nigerian money laundering scheme has some new competition for your attention. While that old ploy attempts to speak to your greed, these newer ones want a dialogue with your inner racism and speak directly to your inner fears about those who are "different":

“Barack Hussein Obama has joined the United Church of Christ in an attempt to downplay his Muslim background,” warns an e-mail titled “Who Is Barack Obama”. “The Muslims have said they plan on destroying the U.S. from the inside out; what better way to start than at the highest level?” “Please forward to everyone you know,” it ended.

Another widely forwarded e-mail is titled “Can a good Muslim become a good American” and answers that question negatively, before concluding: “And Barack Hussein Obama, a Muslim, wants to be our president!!!”

The misinformation is further expanded thanks to the likes of conservative pundits like Ed Rogers, who referred to the candidate as “Barack Hussein Obama”, radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh, who regularly includes the senator's otherwise little-used middle name, and Michael Savage, who called him “Hussein Barack Obama.”

Not that it matters to any to these folks, but Obama, in fact, is not a Muslim. They dislike him not for his faith but for the pigmentation of his skin. It’s hard to measure how these chain e-mail "swift-boat attacks"can effect a campaign, but there are definite indications that they are being heard:

First, “barack obama muslim” is the third most popular Google search for the presidential candidate's name, behind “barack obama” and “barack obama biography,” according to Google Suggest, which tracks the frequency of word searches. I have included these in the tags for this post - we'll see what sort of traffic it pulls in.

Second, a CBS News poll in August found that, in response to an open-ended question about Obama’s faith, 7 percent of Americans identified him as a Muslim — more than any other response. The right answer, Protestant, was second at 6 percent. Which leaves a whopping 87% who didn't know or just didn't care about the issue.

The racists behind these annonymous e-mails are scoundrels of the worst kind with a need to feed their hatred for someone, anyone, in whatever manner they can. While it’s no longer “socially acceptable" to hate black people, it's still okay to hate Muslims. And that gives these bastards a way to attack a black man in a roundabout sorta way. But it still has the same smell. . .