What’s in a Name?
Although referencing Romeo and Juliet is incredibly trite, it nonetheless underscores an important point - it shouldn’t matter in picking the leader of our country. In politics it helps if your name is Bush, Roosevelt, Kennedy or Rockefeller or is alliterative (Ronald Reagan, Hannibal Hamlin etc). But unless your shtick is railing against elite political families or hating repetitive letters and sounds, names usually do not have a negative affect on a politician.
Enter the 2008 presidential race. Although the McCain camp has done a good job denouncing the practice, some of his supporters have selectively chosen to insert Senator Obama’s middle name (Hussein) in various instances to exacerbate the rumor that Obama is Muslim, promote an irrational anti-Muslim fear and subtly connect him with Saddam Hussein.
Even though Obama has used his vast war chest to combat these vicious rumors (most recently through his Fight the Smears website), these rumors have not been allayed. Certain amoral persons of political influence have attempted to move undecided voters through slanderous repetition of these irrational and moronic rumors.
Yet again Obama supporters have attempted to fight these ridiculous rumors on their own. The “We Are All Hussein” movement, as articulated in this New York Times article, is a small but growing group of individuals who have taken the Democratic Presidential candidate’s last as a part of their Facebook or Myspace profiles. As a self professed Kool-Aid drinker, my Facebook name currently reads ‘Patrick Hussein McAlister’.
From the Times:
The movement is hardly a mass one, and it has taken place mostly online, the digital equivalent of wearing a button with a clever, attention-getting message. A search revealed hundreds of participants across the country, along with a YouTube video and bumper stickers promoting the idea. Legally changing names is too much hassle, participants say, so they use “Hussein” on Facebook and in blog posts and comments on sites like nytimes.com, dailykos.com and mybarackobama.com, the campaign’s networking site.
Conservative bloggers have been more whiny than they usually are - attempting to paint the Times (as usual) as a hopeless schill for the Obama campaign.
From some sorry excuse of a watchdog called NewsBusters:
It’s clear that the media is in full damage control after the removal of head scarves from the eyes of cameras at an Obama campaign rally compounded by the Keith Ellison cancellation but this is a bit over the top. Leave it up to the New York Times to knock another chink out of the armor of credibility when it comes to pretending to be an objective source of news on the 2008 presidential trail.
In all honesty, I don’t think changing my name on Facebook will have much of an effect - the ‘response’ I’ve received thus far has been between mild amusement and frustration that I am such a Kool-Aid drinker. However, on the off chance that someone asks or challenges me or one of the hundreds of others participating on why we’ve changed our names, we can argue that a President should be chosen on his merits, not on his name.
Because after all (in keeping with my Romeo and Juliet metaphor),
“That which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet.”
Tags: Bush, candidate, Hussein, Kennedy, New York Times, obama, president, Rockefeller, Romeo and Juliet, web
