Archive for January 21st, 2007

A nice little bit of football history in the making

Published at January 21, 2007 in people of color and sports. Closed

First off: GO COLTS! What a game. That last interception by Marlin Jackson – just beautiful.

With the Indianapolis Colts and the Chicago Bears winning today, that’ll put two Black head coaches – Indianapolis’ Tony Dungy and Chicago’s Lovie Smith – in the Super Bowl. This will be the first time ever that a Black head coach goes to the Super Bowl – and there’ll be two! Yeah, not exactly a monumental anti-racist victory or anything, but still, pretty sweet.

Barack Obama: SECRET MUSLIM (gasp!)

Published at January 21, 2007 in mainstream media, politics/government and terrorism hysteria. Closed

Like me, many of you probably expected that CNN’s little Where’s Obama “accident” was only a hint of things to come. Well, far be it from Fox to disappoint on this count. From ThinkProgress: Fox & Friends aired a segment on Senator Barack Obama, focusing on his supposedly hidden Muslim background. Ignoring the fact that writing about said background in both of his books is basically the opposite of hiding, the anchors and their callers proceed to question whether this past is “ancient history,” or if it matters – apparently, in a way that would make him unsuitable for the presidency.

From the segment transcript:

DOOCY: Why didn’t anybody ever mention that that man right there was raised — spent the first decade of his life, raised by his Muslim father — as a Muslim and was educated in a madrassa?

[snip]

DOOCY: We should also point out that Barack Obama’s father is the one who gave him the middle name of Hussein. And the thing about the madrassa, and you know, let’s just be honest about this, in the last number of years, madrassas have been, we’ve learned a lot about them, financed by Saudis, they teach this Wahhabism which pretty much hates us. The big question is was that on the curriculum back then? Probably not, but it was a madrassa and the big question is whether or not any of these revelations about the fact that he was a Muslim — right now I understand he does go to the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, although not a regular parishioner — but raised as a Muslim, went to a madrassa.

And some brilliant insights from callers:

CALLER: I think that ultimately this will probably be one of the main reasons is he not elected.

DOOCY: Just the fact that his father was a Muslim, he was raised as a Muslim for awhile, and went to a madrassa school in Jakarta?

CALLER: Right. I mean, you think that would possibly give him better insight on the enemy, maybe he doesn’t consider terrorists the enemy.

[snip]

CALLER: I think a Muslim would be fine in the presidency, better than Hillary. At least you know what the Muslims are up to. [Laughter]

But wait – Gretchen Carlson wants to reassure us that this isn’t about being anti-Muslim; no, not at all:

CARLSON: We want to be clear, too, that this isn’t all Muslims, of course, we would only be concerned about the kind that want to blow us up.

Oh, all right. Only those kinds of Muslims. Thanks for clarifying, Gretchen, I feel a lot better now.