hajia

I have always known that as the campaign for the US presidential primaries got nastier and nastier some one would hit Obama below the belt. Right at the onset they had been saying that his last name rhymes with Osama, even if no one really paid any attention. But now that he appears unstoppable they are reaching for the last salvo. I am surprized though that the Clintons were not involved. Nor the religious far right candidate Huckabee or even people with extreme jewish views like Abe Foxman.
It was in Cincinnati, Ohio, when some one billed to introduce John McCain mentioned it. The guy pointedly repeated Obama's middle name (Hussein) in a way that sought to ridicule the name. Perhaps he wanted Americans to link it in some arcane way with the dead Iraqi leader, or perhaps make Americans to think Obama was a Muslim and so not suitable to become the next president. But McCain was quick to see where that kind of name-ridicule could lead to and he put a stop to it immediately. He cautioned the guy and aserted that Hussein was an American name just like Benjamin Franklin and Omar Bradley. Denigrating people's names, he said, was a form of racial and religious bigotry.
Perhaps this is the last we shall hear about it, but lest we forget, Obama, is not a Muslim. His father was a Kenyan Muslim and the middle name Hussein given to him belonged to his grandfather. Believe it or not in America your religion matters in presidential choices. JFK was the first Catholic and perhaps the last to occupy the White House . This makes the chances of Mitt Romney, a Mormon, to be so daunting. But for a black man to be the president of USA it is now a possibility and the country would surely turn a new leaf both domestically and on the international scene.