Comments on: Jewish Forward Says Obama Was ‘Almost Certainly Muslim’

By: online shopping

online shopping — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 11:55:32 +0000

I think it’s ridiculous that a democratic country like America makes such a big deal about race. I come from South Africa – a formerly racist country that discriminated against blacks through a law called apartheid. Even though apartheid was upheld by the government, the majority of the society was far less racist than the kind of bickering I see going on in America. Who cares if Barack was muslim? Will he do the job? Yes, or no? The American elections seem to be all about racism and sexism – but nothing about real character or policies.

By: Norman Weinstein

Norman Weinstein — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 14:30:07 +0000

LeaNder, I owe you a most sincere and abject apology for my response earlier today to your response to my posting of February 9th. I quite honestly did not know where you were coming from, and then I reread that earlier commentary of mine, to discover an unwanted “not” that quite thoroughly turned my intended meaning topsy-turvy. The sentence in question is “Another thing I fear as regards Obama is that the young and others he has invigorated and drawn into the process in remarkable numbers will not in disappointment and or anger pick up their marbles and go home should he eventually not be the nominee.” That first NOT is the culprit. Enough to make one anti-semantic, or maybe I really am an “octogenarian becoming dippy”. Again, my apology.

By: Judy

Judy — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 11:46:20 +0000

There is indeed much to fear there, Norman.

I’d be hard-pressed to pull the lever for Hillary.

By: Norman Weinstein

Norman Weinstein — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 09:23:52 +0000

LeaNder, damned if I fully understand your response to what I wrote earlier. Maybe it’s simply a matter of an octogenarian becoming dippy, but then again maybe not. In any case, I found your questions weird, even with the support I assume your link to mediamatters.org is supposed to provide, a kind of faux scholarship on your part in which you reference renowned experts on the subject at hand - at least, thank God, you didn’t use footnotes. Sending me to the vapid neocon, David Brooks, and to that keen philosopher-observer of the human condition, Joel Stein, et al, in order to demonstrate the validity of your questions, just doesn’t cut the mustard. To bloviate is not necessarily to say anything significant. What I wrote is quite simple, with no esoteric innuendos, just some thoughts of mine based on experience and thinking about such. My “adolescent gesture” meant no more than young Obama supporters, disappointed if he’s not the chosen candidate, might go home; that is, not bother to vote for Hillary, say, but simply go home to TV, computer, iPod, beer, you name it. Where you got “A riot that helps McCain win” eludes me. A young person not getting his way can be quite petulant, as can an older person, but I think less likely so. As to “What do you fear they could be doing instead of picking up their marbles and go home to mom and dad?”, I don’t fear anything, except their potential absence from the polls and their not voting for a Democrat. And that, LeaNder, is it.

By: M. Strane

M. Strane — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 03:33:17 +0000

Hello, i recently saw a report about obama, there was an interview with his mother, i first thought obama is an muslim because of his mothers last name and when i heard his father was a muslim. Currently he is my favourite in the elections.

By: LeaNder

LeaNder — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 00:23:33 +0000

No idea why my first note was put on hold, while the second shows up. May I try again?

Norman Weinstein: “Another thing I fear as regards Obama is that the young and others he has invigorated and drawn into the process in remarkable numbers will not in disappointment and or anger pick up their marbles and go home should he eventually not be the nominee.”

What are you hinting at?. Or what do you fear they could be doing instead of picking up their marbles and go home to mom and dad?

Norman Weinstein: Such an adolescent gesture could well guarantee the ascendancy of that fugitive from Dr. Strangelove’s, the war-loving, social conservative McCain. Given his war talk, we can easily imagine his riding down to glorious perdition that giant phallus of a bomb.

An adolescent gesture? Is what exactly? A riot that helps McCain to win?

http://mediamatters.org/items/200802080014
Media figures call Obama supporters’ behavior “creepy,” compare them to Hare Krishna and Manson followers

By: LeaNder

LeaNder — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 18:34:59 +0000

OK, I pushed the submit button a little too fast again.

Correction:

Below second Weinstein citation:
Again what gesture?

Last line: “…youngsters or do you prefer “creepy cultists”?

By: LeaNder

LeaNder — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 18:30:39 +0000

But what?

Norman Weinstein: “Such an adolescent gesture could well guarantee the ascendancy of that fugitive from Dr. Strangelove’s, the war-loving, social conservative McCain. Given his war talk, we can easily imagine his riding down to glorious perdition that giant phallus of a bomb.”

Again what

Richard is the best example that not all voters of Obama are youngster or do you prefer “crrepy cultists?

http://mediamatters.org/items/200802080014

By: Judy

Judy — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 00:45:59 +0000

Wow. If well educated liberals in NYC didn’t vote for Obama because he father was nominally Muslim, and they actually voiced that out loud, I have to say that’s truly the scariest thing I’ve heard in a while.

I had better start preparing my nominally Muslim children for a more difficult future than I’d imagined for them.

By: Norman Weinstein

Norman Weinstein — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 22:32:02 +0000

This stuff does harm. I know all too sadly well that here in NYC last Tuesday several Jews I know, reasonably sane people who might even classify themselves as liberal, voted against Obama and for Hillary. They, like me, and as many countless thousands are, were fence-sitters, but the Obama-is-Muslim canard flipped them over to the Hillary side - the proverbial what’s-good-for-Israel syndrome. I voted for Obama simply because I felt his baggage a bit less onerous than Hillary’s (her war votes, for instance). But returning to the Obama slur again, which, because it is used as a slur, is a double slime-whammy: (1) he’s a Christian by choice and thus it’s a lie and (2) that his being tagged as a Muslim is being used as an anti-Obama slur is in its very essence bigoted. But then, of course, Senator Obama has actually been somewhat spared the depth and breadth those anthropormorphic sphincters, the slime specialists, are truly capable of; should be become the Democratic nominee, he will learn soon enough what Hillary has long experienced, and of course I refer not to legitimate critiques of her record, but rather everything from an obsessive interest in the quality of her laugh to her alleged murder of Vince Foster. Another thing I fear as regards Obama is that the young and others he has invigorated and drawn into the process in remarkable numbers will not in disappointment and or anger pick up their marbles and go home should he eventually not be the nominee. Such an adolescent gesture could well guarantee the ascendancy of that fugitive from Dr. Strangelove’s, the war-loving, social conservative McCain. Given his war talk, we can easily imagine his riding down to glorious perdition that giant phallus of a bomb.