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[OhioBlue]

33. She said it like it was a bad thing because that was what the right wing campaign against Obama

(and before that it was used in the Dem primaries)

The timing - 6/7 years after 9-11. Remember what the atmosphere was like? Most people in our Country didn't even question a President taking us into war in Iraq even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11. There was mass hysteria and a lack of critical thinking by almost all Republicans but also many Independents and quite a few Dems. The hard core right-wing propaganda machine fed Islamophobia.

So along comes Barack Hussein Obama - Obama sounds like Osama and his middle name is Hussein, and his father was a Muslim.

Before the time of memes.... there were chain emails sent around about Obama being a secret Muslim with ties to terrorists - hell, even a Dem County chair person sent me one during the primaries. I corrected her as I did several other dems. Plus the right-wing propagandists were pushing out content about Obama's ties to Ayres, about his pastor, about his dad and step-dad, going to school in Jakarta which they claimed was a Madrasa. In Arabic Madrasa translates to "school" but Madrasa meant something very different to the American public at the time as Al Queda had been funding fundamentalist madrassas with money from Saudi Arabia to brainwash young Muslims in parts of Afghanistan. The fact that Obama's school was in a very different location in a very different decade was lost to propagandists and their sheep.

So, while I do not condone it, I do understand perfectly what was being implied in that exchange. We have an older, ignorant voter, filled with post 9-11 fear, who probably listened to Rush and Fox and got emails from her neighbors outlining Obama's ties to Muslims and alleged terrorists and she freaked the f_ck out as many did. And for most of us that knocked on doors during the '08 campaign in rural areas, we know the brainwashing that went on. When she said "Arab", she didn't mean "Arab". She was actually trying to be politically correct when she meant Muslim aligned with terrorists and John McCain knew that too. In that context, his response makes sense.