America
Lies about Obama
Kris Anderson
'tis slander,
whose edge is sharper than the sword, whose tongue
out-venoms all the worms of Nile'
(Shakespeare, Cymbeline)
Mike Huckabee, possible Republican presidential contender in 2012, employee of Fox News, and a well-liked and popular politician, declared recently that he worried about Obama's political honesty because:
'If you think about it, his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather, their view of the Mau Mau revolution in Kenya is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather.'
In voicing these concerns, Huckabee joins the tribe of conservative politicos and pundits who, in order to advance their own 'political capital' (à la George Bush), ignore the facts: Obama was born in Hawaii and was raised there, in Indonesia, and in California; he had little meaningful contact with his father (as meditated upon extensively in his best-selling memoir 'Dreams from My Father)'; he only visited Kenya for the first time after his father had died; and he has never, in his political decisions, advanced any policy that might suggest the kind of 'radical' anti-Western positioning that Huckabee claims.
Normally upon hearing something like this, I'd shrug and roll my eyes: these are prominent, if outrageous, falsehoods that come as no surprise to those familiar with Tea Party smear campaigns. But earlier that same day, my inbox's defences – otherwise a bastion of cosy reason (or so I like to think) – had been breached by an email forward that, because it caught me off-guard, made me unreasonably furious, a fury compounded by Huckabee's inanities.
The email was captioned 'PRAY FOR OUR NATION!' and it described, in outraged tones, the release by the US Post Office of a stamp with Arabic script on it celebrating Eid al-Fitr. Bordered by eight-bit clipart eagles and flags, the email's text reads: 'We can't have anything with the words 'God' or 'Christ' on it, but we can celebrate a Muslim holiday! Wake up america [sic]!!!'. The stamp has been officially commissioned by President Obama himself, the email declared, nudging the reader to contemplate the commander-in-chief's secret Islamic faith. 'Remember to adamantly & vocally BOYCOTT this stamp, when you are purchasing your stamps at the post office,' it concluded somewhat ungrammatically. 'All you have to say is, 'No thank you, I do not want that Muslim Stamp on my letters!' Pass this along to every Patriotic American that you know and get the word out! Honor the United States of America!!!'.
Never mind that in reality the stamp's issuance pre-dated Obama – indeed, it was released under Bush in August 2001 – and no matter that it's part of the Post Office's 'Holidays' stamp series that features Hanukah, Kwanzaa, and Christmas images, too, including one titled 'Angel with Lute' and another called 'Christmas: Madonna and Sleeping Child' with Jesus himself on it. And forget, as the intended recipients and forwarders of this email no doubt willingly have, that the millions of Christmas cards Americans receive each year are borne to them uniformly sporting those 44-cent baby Messiahs and pie-faced, haloed cherubim. (For that matter, don't bother reflecting on Judeo-Christian ethics of tolerance, either.) Most of all, when citing the American constitution as the cornerstone of one's patriotism (as the author of this email doubtless does), be careful to skip the bit where it notes that religious freedom is constitutionally-enshrined, and try to ignore that religious freedom includes stupid things like being able to buy postage stamps celebrating your holidays no matter what your creed.
Lest this turn into another rant against faith or a lecture about misinterpretations of democracy and misguided patriotisms, however, let me set this email forward into context. First of all, there are thousands of similar emails out there. This missive, banal and idiotic as it is, needs to be understood as one of the more pedestrian yet pernicious tendrils of a discourse that's as commonplace in America as most foreigners love to suspect. It flows out of the Glenn Beck/Rush Limbaugh/Sarah Palin school of fact-finding, and is part of a corpus that includes the following abject, conspiratorial lies about Barack Hussein Obama: he...
1. is a closet Muslim;
2. hates America and is covertly plotting its downfall;
3. is not an American citizen and therefore his presidency is illegitimate;
4. is a fascist;
5. is a communist/socialist (these terms are used interchangeably in this context);
6. is a tyrannical Nazi-Marxist (never mind that these ideologies are incompatible);
7. is a terrorist who also (in Sarah Palin's indelible words) 'pall[s] around with terrorists';
8. is a liberal and liberals are all of these things.
These claims, beyond being factually incorrect (although to be fair, he is a liberal), are also obviously wrong, inasmuch as they trivialise the genuine victims of communism, fascism, and tyranny, and also transform Islamic-Americans into second-class citizens at best and enemies of state at worst. (Of course, immigrants are also taking our jobs, the liberal media elite is eroding our sovereignty, and gays are imperilling our marriages, so I suppose Muslims at least aren't alone in their villainy.)
Complementing these lies is a set of more specific assertions: that 'Obama-care', the new healthcare reform package, is un-American in its disavowal of individual liberty (it mandates universal health insurance) and eugenicist in its creation of 'death panels' for the elderly (amazingly, this old lie still circulates); that the Book of Revelation's description of the Anti-Christ precisely matches Obama; that former Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry lied about his heroism in Vietnam; that the Fort Hood gunman previously advised Obama on homeland security; that Obama was endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan and funded by Hugo Chávez; that Hilary Clinton has ties to the Black Panthers; that Obama will legalise marijuana if one million people call a designated phone number, and so forth.
These fabrications sound absurd and incredible because they are, and if they featured only in email forwards and the odd tabloid headline, they would remain thus. But they are so oft-repeated on mainstream, primetime television, print and radio, and are bankrolled by herculean entities (mostly News Corporation's minions and industry pressure groups) that such fabrications acquire a veneer of veracity. Huckabee is merely the latest conservative politician to hop off Sen. McCain's erstwhile Straight Talk Express (McCain himself was one of the first to disembark) in order to stowaway on the Tea-Party’s trawler.
Some might say that all’s fair in politics and in war, and that the Democrats play dirty, too. The latter is certainly true, but so far the Democratic political machine hasn't launched Beck-and-Limbaugh-style smear campaigns – that is, a politics-of-manipulation founded upon precisely the kind of overt, sensationalistic lies designed to roar through gullible minds like wildfire through sagebrush.
The email itself isn't a serious worry to Democrats, although it might be to America's Islamic communities. But the wider discourse of Palin, Beck, Limbaugh, Fox News and now even Huckabee – those personal attacks on specific individuals – borders on the slanderous. American politicians are hesitant to sue the creators and (more importantly) the media propagators of such fabricated slurs for two primary reasons: because free speech is seen as the seminal American right (eg the Supreme Court's ruling in favour of the Westboro Baptist Church protestors), and because to do so would give even greater coverage to such falsities. It's a damn shame: I'd love to see Obama call Murdoch and his goons before the bench.
Kris Anderson is a lecturer in English literature for the Open University and a tutor in English at Oxford University. She is last year's UK and Ireland Young Thinker of the Year, an annual competition with which the Scottish Review is associated.
