HUSSEIN!

What's more pathetic? The idea that conservatives and Clintonites think that Barack Obama's middle name will prejudice people against him, or the fact that liberals and Democrats are afraid that they're right?

Clearly an effort is under way either to make Senator Obama look ridiculous or to make Americans suspect that he's some sort of alien in our midst. Hence the emphasis on the foreign name, the photograph of the African costume, the attempt to prove him guilty by passive association with Louis Farrakhan. My suggestion to Obama's supporters, if they think it's all unfair, is to get unfair themselves. And what could be more unfair than to pick on someone who's no longer in the campaign?

If people want to insinuate that Obama is some kind of crypto-Muslim or worse, crypto-Nation of Islam, let the Obamites remind the public that the Republican party came close to nominating a MORMON to the highest office in the land, and let them remind us of the outlandish history of Mormon belief, past and present, and of the fact that Mormons only allowed blacks into posts of authority within Mitt Romney's lifetime. Let them emphasize that while Barack Obama is not what some people say he is, Romney is in fact an actual Mormon! And when people howl in protest, ask them why it's OK to question one group's outlandish beliefs but not another's. Is there a statute of limitations that the Nation and Scientology haven't gotten past yet, but Mormonism has? Who set that statute in stone?

If some people want to believe there's something inherently un-American about Obama because of who he is, what he's called, and what he occasionally wears, we should observe that there's a lot of un-American elements deep within the so-called American mainstream, the pre-American baggage that's held this country back in many ways. We can move on and examine all of that baggage, or as I guess most people would prefer, we could go back to the ordinary sort of lies about politicians.