On Politics|The Piper Will Lead Us To Reason
“I think the president’s problem is that he was born a Muslim, his father was a Muslim,” explained the Rev. Franklin Graham.
“The seed of Muslim is passed through the father like the seed of Judaism is passed through the mother. He was born a Muslim; his father gave him an Islamic name.”
Those televised remarks, made in an interview with CNN’s John King on Thursday, come amidst the backdrop of an August 19th survey by The Pew Research Center which found an increase in the number of Americans who believe that President Obama is a Muslim.
In the results, Pew found “that nearly one in five Americans (18 percent) now say Obama is a Muslim, up from an 11 percent in March 2009. Only about one-third of adults (34 percent) say Obama is a Christian, down sharply from 48 percent in 2009.”
And, nearly 43 percent say they have no idea what religion Obama practices.
However, the number who question Obama’s Christianity is larger among the president’s political opponents. 34 percent of Republicans believe Obama is a Muslim, “as do 30 percent of those who disapprove of Obama’s job performance.”
Rumors and innuendo surrounding the religious beliefs of Barack Hussein Obama have long swirled around the country, as far back as the 2008 Democratic Primary race.
Early in the general election, then-Candidate Obama’s campaign unveiled their “Fight the Smears” website in an effort to aggressively refute whisper campaigns that Obama was a secret Muslim, refused to say the pledge of allegiance, etc.
What a difference, then, two years makes during what former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich described on Sunday as “the summer of our discontent” on ABC’s “This Week.”
The same week the Pew Research survey became the topic for water cooler discussion, an already heated conversation regarding the building of a mosque two blocks from ground zero in Lower Manhattan had reached fever pitch.
No matter the “ground zero mosque” was actually an Islamic community center in the mold of the Jewish 92nd Street Y uptown and that it was located two blocks away from ground zero.
No matter that in December 2009 when conservative political commentator Dr. Laura Ingraham guest-hosted “The O’Reilly Factor” and interviewed Daisy Khan, co-founder of the project and wife of its Imam, Abdul Rauf, she praised Ms. Khan and the building’s construction.
“I can’t find many people who really have a problem with it,” Ingraham told Ms. Khan. “I like what you’re trying to do and Ms. Khan we appreciate it and come on my radio show some time.”
That was old Laura Ingraham.
New, reasonable Laura Ingraham appears on “Good Morning America” and says things like “the terrorists have won with how this has gone down. 600 feet from where thousands of our fellow Americans were incinerated in the name of political Islam and we’re supposed to be considered ‘intolerant’ if we’re not cheering this?”
The reason for Ingraham’s newfound outrage and moral indignation?
As per usual, look no further than Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News and the right wing media.
Thanks to Salon.com’s Justin Elliott and his research and reporting, we now have a timeline charting the manufacturing of a fake scandal, describing how an Islamic Center became “Ground Zero Mosque.”
“Ground Zero Mosque” resonates for all the obvious reasons; what Elliott’s piece in Salon.com makes clear is that Rupert Murdoch’s conservative media empire appears all too ready to exploit those ‘obvious reasons’ for political gain, ginning up tension in an already anxious electorate struggling through the worst recession since the Great Depression with tales of Muslim boogeymen.
And, as if the obvious need be more obvious, Murdoch’s News Corp. donated $1 million to the Republican Governors Association (with—surprise, surprise— no matching funds to Democrats).
Finally, Murdoch has given the Republicans their long promised dowry, making official what many of us have known for years: Fox News is about as “fair and balanced” as Obama is “Muslim” and “the Antichrist.”
James Cooper is a MA student in Screen Studies and English at Oklahoma State University. He received his BA in Film Studies and English from the University of Oklahoma.
In hard times and especially election times, people always look for a scapegoat instead of dealing with real problems like our economy and justice issues. It’s disheartening that so many people can be mislead by our media and even more disheartening that our media is being misleading in the first place.