The Worst Kind of Bigotry

Frankly, I couldn't care less if Obama was a Pastafarian, but someone is hellbent on making his belief/nonbelief in the so-called one true religion an issue, and unfortunately with some segments of the electorate, imbecilic fear mongering still works:

Basically the e-mail falsely states that I'm Muslim, that I pledged my oath of office on a Koran instead of a Bible, that I don't Pledge Allegiance to the flag. Scurrilous stuff. I want to make sure that your viewers understand that I am a Christian who has belonged to the same church for almost 20 years now. It's where Michelle and I got married. It's where our kids were dedicated. I took my oath of office on my family Bible.

I lead the Pledge of Allegiance when I open up the Senate. I've been saying the Pledge of Allegiance since I was three years old. I think it 's very important for people not to buy into the kinds of dirty tricks that we've become so accustomed to in our politics and people need to understand I'm not and never have been of the Muslim faith.

I think that those who are of the Muslim faith are deserving of respect and dignity, but to try and feed into this fear-mongering and try to question my faith commitments and my belief in Jesus Christ, I think is offensive. And I want to make sure that people are absolutely clear about what's going on with this, and if they get another one of these e-mails that they're deleting it and letting their friends know that it's nonsense.

Of course, this kind of ugly tactic is not new:

Chris Hayes did the best digging I've seen into the origins of these things, and wound up tracing some of the themes back to an obscure right-wing publicist in August of 2004. There's also a Free Republic regular who's made a site called "Freedom's Enemies" a hub of the smear campaign, as an Obama supporter recently pointed out to me.

It'll only get worse if Obama becomes the Democratic Party's nominee, and I'm glad to see he doesn't hesitate to confront the b.s. head on.

Technorati Tags: barack obama, religion, faith, islam, christianity, election

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