Southern senator: ‘My people’ dislike Obama because he is too ‘exotic’

[Martin Eden]

24. Barack Hussein Obama. Black Kenyan father. Lived in Indonesia as a child.

That alone is enough to make a lot of Red State 'muricans believe He ain't one of us!!!

Add to that the 24/7 efforts of rightwing political strategists and talk radio, a sizeable chunk of the voting public fear and loathe him for reasons that have nothing to do with government policy or their own economic interests.

Then you have statements like the one below, from a man whom ignorant people view as an intellectual giant:

“What if he is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anticolonial behavior, can you begin to piece together his actions? That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior.”

In this context it's pretty easy to understand what "exotic" means, and it goes beyond the fact that this president is half black. He'd be a lot less exotic if he had two black parents who were born in America and never left the country. The brush that Gingrich and his ilk have painted Obama with is dipped in racism, but it's a more varied color scheme than that.