…and fails miserably.

Recently, the amount of irrational ad hominems and racism directed at Obama has increased. No surprise there. The right-wing gutter press (actually, make that all the right-wing press) in the USA is well known for campaigning about people, not politics. They’ve already torn Clinton to shreds, wildly designating her a feminist because…she’s a woman.

And she’s (unofficially, of course) joined in now, as she needs to distract people from the mud that stuck to her…

Fortunately, what they’ve managed to dig up just doesn’t stick to Obama. Let’s look at the three primary accusation hurled at Obama:

- His middle name is Hussein, so he simply must be a Muslim.
- His pastor is black, and most of the people who go to his church are black - and they don’t try to hide it.
- He bought a house from and next-to a supporter who was later discovered to have indulged in some dodgy deals.

I’m not sure I need to tear those apart, as most are so simply self-satirising that it seems pointless. Sometimes they simply break each other. They say he’s a Muslim - and then criticise him for the (Christian) church he goes to.

Am I the only one that sees the contradiction there?

Beyond these contradictions, a lot of it simply doesn’t work - at least for someone with the slightest hint of rationality. He’s got a name of muslim origin. Great. There are a lot of people in America with, say, Russian names. Does that make them ex-communists because the country their family came from was communist? No. And the same logic applies to every other name, including muslim ones…

He’s a member of a church with a proudly black pastor and a largely black congregation. He joined it when he was acting as a community organiser in a (largely black) community. I somehow fail to feel shock here. It probably doesn’t help me that religion has played no overt part in his campaign, and that logically, therefore, neither has the church…

Or it could be that I’m not a bigot, I don’t know.

As for the house, I again fail to be impressed. Obama’s already handed $37,000 of the man’s donations to charity. More than that, allegations about dodgy gifts have already failed to make an impact on other candidates’ campaigns. Remember when the GOP establishment made such a fuss about all those gifts Huckabee had received as governor? Remember that Huckabee promptly went on to trounce the other candidates in Iowa? Corruption smears aren’t sticking at the moment.

Besides, compared to a lot of the outright corruption in US presidential politics, this looks like an honest mistake…

Of course, far more of this dirt will stick than I seem to be giving credit for. Various sections of the electorate will no doubt latch on to certain allegations and declare Obama some sort of black satan for them. But somehow, I don’t think many of them would have voted for him in the first place. There’s a paragraph in the Guardian article which rather neatly summarises what I mean:

“As they digested their candidate’s win, a group of four McCain supporters drank beer and contemplated the imminent arrival of black Democratic hopeful Barack Obama. ‘You know what Barack Obama’s middle name is?’ asked one. ‘Hussein,’ he said, answering his own question. The sharp intakes of breath by his companions said more than words.”

Note: “Four McCain supporters.” McCain. Does that sound like Obama - or Democrat - to you?

People will remember everything thrown at Obama. There’s no doubt about that. But the people who’ll remember aren’t the ones the GOP shit-machine was hoping to catch. They’re already voting Republican.