From Media Matters:
On the September 22 broadcast of his syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh baselessly claimed that Sen. Barack Obama is “not black,” and went on to ask: “Do you know he has not one shred of African-American blood?” Limbaugh continued: “He’s Arab. You know, he’s from Africa. He’s from Arab parts of Africa. … [H]e’s not African-American. The last thing that he is is African-American.”
Think about it.
As of 2006, Arbitron ratings indicated that The Rush Limbaugh Show had a minimum weekly audience of 13.5 million listeners, making it the largest radio talk show audience in the United States.
Somewhere around 14 million Americans were assured today that Barack Obama is not African-American, but Arab-American. Here is the ethnic composition of Kenya, where Barack Obama’s father came from (according to the CIA):
Kikuyu 22%, Luhya 14%, Luo 13%, Kalenjin 12%, Kamba 11%, Kisii 6%, Meru 6%, other African 15%, non-African (Asian, European, and Arab) 1%
Barack Obama Sr. was a member of the Luo tribe. They are not Arab. In fact, the vast majority of them are not even Muslim.
The Luo traditionally believed in an afterlife and a supreme creator, whom they called Nyasaye, and had a strong ancestor cult. Today most Kenya Luo are Christians, and a small number are Muslim.
In fact Barack Obama Sr. would not have been even nominally Muslim if his father (Barack’s grandfather) had not converted.
His father, Onyango Obama (c. 1895-1979, buried at Alego),[1] belonged to the Luo tribe and was born Onyango, son of Obama (buried at Kendu Bay, Kenya) and wife Nyaoke, in one of their villages. Before working as a cook for missionaries in Nairobi, Onyango had travelled widely, enlisting with the name Onyango Obama in the British colonial forces during World War I and visiting Europe, India, and Zanzibar, where he converted from Christianity to Islam.
By all accounts, Barack Obama Sr. did not follow in his father’s footsteps as an observant Muslim. He was not an Arab. And Rush Limbaugh just lied to his 14 million-strong audience about this for one simple reason. He wants to confuse people and frighten them by playing on their ignorance and fear of Islam and Arabs.
By all rights, there shouldn’t be an advertiser in the country willing to associate their product with Rush Limbaugh’s show. And for the record, Barack Obama Jr. is a Christian, raised by his white mother and grandparents in Honolulu, Hawaii. He spent a few years in Indonesia before returning to Hawaii to attend high school. He attended Occidental University in Los Angeles before transferring to Columbia University in Manhattan. He received his law degree from Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts before moving to Chicago to practice law. He also worked as a community organizer, helping people that had been laid off when the steel mills closed on the south side of Chicago.
In other words, Obama has lived in four major U.S. cities (five, if you include Honolulu). He has degrees from two Ivy League schools (just like George W. Bush). He’s a Christian. And he was raised by white parents and grandparents. But Rush Limbaugh is telling people that he’s an Arab and suspect as an American.
Not to put too fine of a point on it, but I’d like to feed Rush Limbaugh his own testicles.
Here’s the Snopes. They didn’t even accuse him of being an Arab in the email virus.
Imagine, in America, having to apologize (or vociferously deny) that you are Arabic or Muslim.
Is this bigotry or is it just pragmatic politics in the land of the free? How proud we are to be Americans (Caucasians).
The amazing thing is that the corporate media bombarded us 24/7 with the Pastor Wright story for the better part of a month. It was made perfectly clear to anyone with a functioning brain that Obama sat in a Christian church in Chicago every Sunday for 20 years. Yet the wingnuts can still manage to get some of their following to buy into this Muslim stuff.
I figure they are pushing the Muslim angle so hard because that gives racists an alternative excuse for voting against a black man. Most people won’t come right out and say they are voting against Obama because he is black. But they are very comfortable voting against him if they can explain their actions by saying that he’s a Muslim.
Stories like this always leave me with mixed emotions–It’s frustrating to come up against the calculating cynicism of Limbaugh and his flock. But the good news is that it serves as a reminder that we’ve got the smart people on our side.
Spouse said there will be many people who believe he is dangerous because he belonged to a “radical” Christian Church for 20 years and at the same time believe he’s dangerous because he’s really a Muslim.
It’s his skin color, pure and simple. Hard to express my disgust with my fellow Americans and my deep disappointment in the lack of support for a better world that is represented by our Constitution, esp in its amendments.
I really do. I loathe him. I’m trying to think of a response and all I can come up with is that I loathe him…
I used to spend a good deal of time trying to talk to the ditto heads. It does not work. The MSM does nothing because Limbaugh and his ditto heads are a lunatic fringe. I know 14 million listen to this idiot but I doubt any effort to convince any of those 14 million of anything would be anything but a waste of time. The only answer is to defeat them in the election. Vote!
You cannot have a conversation with anyone who listens to Rush on the regular – they’re only receiving validation for that which they already believe (“We don’t want that n-word in the White House!”). Rush is simply doing GOTV with the only tool left in arsenal – blatant racism. Facts are essentially irrelevant in this regard – he just has to motivate them to show up on election day, and what better way to rile up his type of listener than to stoke their fears of this utterly uppity other threatening their well-being, however they define that.
If you encounter someone who regularly listens to Rush then keep on moving – conversing with them will only irritate them and frustrate you. Move on to someone who actually thinks for themselves.
Facts are essentially irrelevant in this regard
Well, we are talking about Republicans, after all.
What ever happened to the good old American boycott?
One of the tabloids has a shrieking headline that perhaps was stimulated by Limbaugh’s rants. “Shocking new proof: Obama is a Muslim!” Or close to that. Depending on overlap, that’s more millions who will drink the same flavor of kool aid.
Limbaugh’s job is Herder of Fools. None of his flock achieves minimal standards of intelligence or sanity. Now the poor things are confronted with a dilemma: is it worse that Obama is a nigger or that he’s an ayrab? There should be some tiny brains frying today.
A couple decades ago, when biologists actually considered “race” a valid biological construct, the arab populations were considered “black.”
Today, with the rich genetic information that we have, biologists have pretty much abandoned race as a construct at all. There were probably four migrations out of Africa, four distinct genetic groups among indigenous Americans, and we are constantly finding out newly fascinating tidbits about our rich anthropological past. (Did you know the Scots and Irish are Celts, but the Welch are Basques who just speak Celt to confuse us all?)
I’ve diaried this, and people insist that race is still an anthropological construct if not biological. I find that very outdated and look forward to the day when we reserve that term for subspecies of California lizards or house sparrows, not people.
Limbaugh’s lies wouldn’t be allowed to stand unchallenged on his own show if the fairness doctrine were still in place.
Reagan killed the Fairness Doctrine, which required any station – radio or television – to offer equal time within the context of the same show for rebuttals to claims that were challenged.
That’s why news was so much less biased in the past. If they stepped over the line, they had to give up airtime to the other side. So while they could spin and shade the truth, they had to stick to the truth. Now, they don’t. There’s no one holding their feet to the fire.
PLEASE, bloggers. PLEASE write your Congresspeople and Senators and ask for a new version of the old Fairness Doctrine. It’s the only thing that will save the media from leading half our people over a cliff.
The Fairness Doctrine is strictly a numbers game. We would need large supermajorities to even consider it. Letter writing is pointless. And, as a publisher of partisan political material, I have some concerns about any effort to enforce neutrality in political speech (even on the public airwaves).
Blogs wouldn’t be affected – this was airwaves only.
Yeah.
Right.
The entire African-American Community waited breathlessly for Tush Limpblah to define who is Black so they could decide whether or not to vote for Senator Obama.
Is Tush on the Oxy again?
So what? I’ve worked with several Arabs that I know of, one Lebanese and two Palestinians. I’ve worked with two Iranians (yes, I do know they aren’t Arabs). All were Muslim and all were good co-workers and decent people. The Palestinians were rather torqued about Israel, but the Lebanese was not. Besides, support of Israel is a political question, not a Litmus test.
Whoa!
Rush Limbaugh is a Lying Bigot
Double redundancy, dude!
We’ve all heard this before, but it happens to be true. What’s the difference between Limbaugh and the Hindenberg? One’s a Nazi gasbag and the other’s a blimp.