The Year of Racism

Ok, this settles it. 2006, the Year of Racism. (Did Slog first come up with that term? I can't recall, I think they might have. But I'm not going to waste time using Google, that could take minutes.)

In a December 18 column headlined "Barack Hussein Obama: Once a Muslim, Always A Muslim" and posted on her website, right-wing pundit Debbie Schlussel argued that because Sen. Barack Obama's (D-IL) middle name is Hussein, his late, estranged father was of Muslim descent, and he has shown interest in his father's Kenyan heritage, Obama's "loyalties" must be called into question as he emerges as a possible Democratic presidential candidate. In the column, Schlussel asked: "So, even if he identifies strongly as a Christian ... is a man who Muslims think is a Muslim, who feels some sort of psychological need to prove himself to his absent Muslim father, and who is now moving in the direction of his father's heritage, a man we want as President when we are fighting the war of our lives against Islam? Where will his loyalties be?" She ended her column by asking if Obama becoming vice president instead would be acceptable. Answering her own question, she wrote: "NO WAY, JOSE ... Or, is that, HUSSEIN?"

As Atrios comments:

Schlussel, of course, is a fairly regular contributor to our mainstream media discourse, appearing on Fox and MSNBC multiple times over the past year.

The mainstreaming of bigotry and racism has been one of the more depressing developments over the past few years.

Indeed. And the U.S. media wonders why we are shrill, to kind of riff on how Atrios usually responds.

If you ask me, the best response to conservative stupidity and racism, short of injuring one's head by banging it on the desk, is to be as shrill as possible. I know, it's the holidays, so we're not supposed to be shrill, but now and then the righties' true colors come showing through. And it's always pathetic how they don't even realize they are racist morons. See, there I go again.

Ouch, head meet desk.