Take anything you read in the New York Post with a grain of salt, but. . .
March 3, 2008 — TOLEDO, Ohio - Barack Obama yesterday lashed out at political enemies who are spreading false rumors that he’s a closet Muslim as he proclaimed, “I pray to Jesus every night.”
“I am a devout Christian,” he told voters in this key state.
“I pray to Jesus every night and try to go to church as much as I can.”
It’s beyond sad that we haven’t evolved through hate and bigotry in this country that Obama has to literally shout from the church tower ‘I PRAY TO JESUS’ in order to be even considered as a candidate for POTUS.
And the sad thing is that we don’t know how much of this is coming from the typical right wing haters or some dirty tricks employees of the Clinton campaign.
As Phil Donahue used to say, “one more time for the Midwest:”
Obama’s bid to end the rumor-mongering came just days after his campaign accused Hillary Rodham Clinton of launching a deliberate smear after the Drudge Report Web site reported that one of her staffers had forwarded photos of him wearing a turban on a 2006 trip to Africa.
In addition, numerous e-mails have circulated for months saying falsely that Obama is a Muslim.
Obama’s late father, who was from Kenya, was a Christian who converted to Islam, though he was not religious. Obama himself was never a Muslim and has been a member of the same Christian church for the last 20 years.
On a recent visit to Cleveland, The Post conducted an informal survey of about a dozen people and found that most didn’t know Obama’s faith - and many incorrectly assumed he was a Muslim.
Of course a Post informal survey could have been pulling people aside on Public Square but I can believe that most people are quite ignorant of Obama’s faith, some willfully so. In my little town I have met several that FIRMLY believe, against all evidence, that if he isn’t a overt Muslim, he’s some kind of ‘Manchurian candidate’ for radical Islam.
I’m beginning to think it may be a very uphill climb for Obama to be elected POTUS in a general election.
Not only will this issue not go away, the Chistofascists are going to have a field day with Obama’s church, the United Church of Christ, which will no doubt be smeared in scurrilous e-mails, as an apostate church - not a true Church of Jesus Christ but a ‘liberal non-church.’
As if it isn’t enough that the IRS has launched a bogus investigation of the UCC on the flimsiest of pretexts. You will never see the IRS conduct a similar inquisition on any of the right wing megachurches or televangelists who absolutely DO conduct political business from the pulpit. But these ‘persecuted Christians’ have friends in high places.
So whatever Obama does to establish his Christian bona fides it wont be enough. You can bet on that.
