There's
perhaps no clearer illustration of the disconnect between naked racism
and stark reality -- or, the connection between primal prejudice and
utter ignorance -- than the fable promoted by President Barack Obama's most ill-bred critics about our
President being a Muslim who spent the 20 years prior to his
election attending religious services at Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Christian church.
Wouldn't it be nice if one of these critics produced a Christian cleric who
considers Allah his "personal lord and savior?" Or, perhaps
someone claiming to be a devout follower of Islam who pursues that faith
through the teachings of a Christian preacher?
We all know it will
never happen. That's one reason why recent news of an aborted attempt to again
raise an ipso facto argument about President Obama's politics and Rev. Wright's
black liberation theology seems so utterly irrational even for certain folks who simply hate Obama's guts. After
all, the principals involved are Barack Obama and Rev. Wright; not Malcolm X
and Rev. Albert Cleage . Cleage, of Detroit, Michigan, was a
Christian pastor with whom Malcolm was closely allied during the 60s. Malcolm,
then a member of the Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam, was a raised as a Seventh-Day Adventist prior
to his conversion to Islam.
This ignorant fantasy
of the Obama-haters about a "Muslim Christian" running this country
brings to mind a fragment of a recent conversation on African-American culture
I inadvertently overheard. The part I caught was: --well, where do
you think those stereotypes come from?" Nearly instinctively, I thought:
"Fox News Channel." But there was nothing Freudian about this
reaction. If anything, it was far more intuitive. What's Freudian probably
relates more to that which underlies the findings of yet another recent study --
by Farleigh-Dickenson University -- which reinforces a consensus arrived at
through several previous studies ; that in many respects, the average
Fox News channel viewer has the cognitive capability of a cardboard box.
Though this isn't
exactly breaking news, some of the findings of this particular study do seem a
bit beyond perplexing. For example, the scores racked up by habitual Fox
viewers on domestic topics -- stuff that perhaps even zombies should know --
were actually lower than the median score achieved by people who don't
watch news at all.
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