Originally posted by: cumhail
Originally posted by: CADsortaGUY
Originally posted by: sandorski
If you have always used Middle names, continue on, but I'll take a chance and say you're FOS.
I have for quite some time. BHO, Obamarama, etc. It's only recently been an issue to some people here.
What I believe he meant is whether you regularly use the middle names of people (or at least politicians) when discussing them. Do you regularly say "George Walker Bush," for example, or "Richard Bruce Cheney" or "John Sidney McCain?" If not, then what is so special about this particular middle name that compels you to include it?
All that said, what sickens me more than anything else is that we're still so unabashedly bigoted in this country that his faith is something to defend, deny, etc. The right accuses him of being Muslim, the left goes into a furor that these false accusations have been made... But why is neither side troubled by the fact that being thought to be Muslim is a problem? Why does neither side take and promote the position that those who use any religion as a source of contempt or shame or denigration are not only bigoted, but unamerican?
If I liked or disliked Romney, as a candidate, it had nothing to do with his being a Mormon; but with his positions. And yes, it upset me that this was presented as an issue. If I like or dislike Lieberman, it's not because he's Jewish. And my opinion of Bush is not colored by the fact that he's a United Methodist. If and when any of those people allows his personal religious convictions to supercede their willingness and ability to uphold the Consitution and perform his elected duties, then it's a problem. Until then, though, it's none of my damned business nor anyone else's.
And yet with Obama, we don't even have his faith being used as a source of controversy (as we saw with Romney). Worse, we have accusations of his possibly being either a secret adherent or a sympathizer of a religion being invoked to scare voters. We have the candidate, himself, denying it with all the passion of an accused communist or communist sympathizer in the McCarthy era or a Nazi-sympathizer during WWII.
When in 2000, supporters of George W Bush (initial, you'll note, just to specify which Bush... not the full middle name) sought to scare voters away from McCain by implying that he'd fathered an illegitimate black child (would an illegitimate white one have been ok, I wonder?), it was just such a disgusting example of playing, appealing, and campaigning to bigotry. We saw it, as well, when Harold Ford, Jr. was running for election in 2006. And now we have it again with Obama's middle name, with his father's religion, with his implied links to that religion. But at the end of the day, at least most people saw these earlier attempts as being grounded in bigotry. And yet, time and again, this issue with Obama gets revisited with nary a peek from him, from his opponents, nor even from the media regarding the fact that it is every bit as grounded in bigotry, in racism, in hatred, in fear... as those earlier cases were.
It just sickens me, plain in simple. It makes me disgusted with the Republicans, with the Democrats, with the Media, with many of the people I interact online, and with the public at large that so few people have deemed this form of bigotry as acceptable. I don't care if he's a bisexual Animist who's married to a transgendered Wiccan. So long as he well represents my views and is willing and able to perform the duties of the office, and so long as his personal life choices don't supercede his constitutional duties, that's his business and his alone.