Belligerent Rednecks and No-Good Muslins (and Xmas with family and friends)

I had a lovely Christmas dinner at a family friend's place in our neighborhood in Brooklyn. The main sources of entertainment for the occasion were a Hollywood writer, his 3 year-old daughter and Max the cat. The hostess, who I've known since I can remember knowing people who are my parents' age, explained how the cat had come to its comfortable existence in Brooklyn Heights after growing up on the streets of Islamabad (I would explain, but I think that story will be better in your imagination). She finished the story with "and that's how we ended up with an Islamo-terrorist cat." I feel awkward printing that in a public forum on flat text, because it looks bad, but in the context of friendship and mutually understood liberal leanings, it was nothing more than a throwaway joke (she later backed up her claim with the evidence that Max had torn up a feather boa that very morning).

Later, I got to thinking about why that joke makes any sense at all. If the cat had been from Britain, maybe be would be a "stuffy intellectual" or maybe if Max was Hawaiian, he would be a "surfer cat." He could have been an Indian yogi cat or a Japanese robot cat. As it was, he had immigrated from Islamabad, so he was an "Islamo-terrorist." I want to make clear, in case it's not already, that the jokemaker does not think that the Middle East is packed to the brim with terrorists, and that if there's any commentary in the backdrop, it has to do with the loose usage of that sort of term that's infected too many conversations, both public and private.

It made me think about the rumors about Obama and his background that penetrated into some corners that not a lot of information reaches. "He's the antichrist" said a student from the community college. "You're voting for a Muslim," said a guy in a Walmart parking lot. My favorite was the secondhand story I heard of an old man holding up a sign that read "Obama is a no-good muslin." That's right, folks. Our next president is secretly one of these:

And a no-good one at that.

Over the course of the campaign I sometimes thought about why the muslim rumor took hold. For instance, I don't think it would have worked to call him a Soviet spy. I bet you could have made (certain) people believe that he's plotting something with Robert Mugabe, but I don't think that story would have gone viral. No, a totally false rumor of that kind needs to play off associations that have been pounded into the zeitgeist. The same connection of ideas that allows my liberal friend to make a joke about her Islamo-terrorist cat allows others to make people actually believe that we have an Islamo-terrorist president. The string of logic, as I understand it, goes something like this:
1) He's a black man with the name Barack Hussein Obama.
2) He spent part of his upbringing in Indonesia
3) He's a muslim
3b) He's a terrorist
Optional- 4) He's the antichrist

If you want the more fleshed out version you have to throw in a few details and a picture in between 2 and 3, and a Bible passage or two between 3 and 4, but I think the bare bones picture is more interesting and descriptive, because for so many people, the whole picture clicks into place very easily, especially the step from 3 to 3b. Some of them had details, and some of them didn't, but the basic picture was what mattered.

I came across the full range of beliefs and opinions over the course of my 3 months in Richmond County. There were two people that stick out in my memory. One was a man I spoke to going door to door on a beautiful late afternoon in September. He seemed reasonable, and at least somewhat informed on the campaigns and the issues. He liked Obama better on the economy, healthcare, education, foreign policy... and yet he was leaning toward McCain. Why? Well, he'd been getting these emails from friends and family, about how Obama was a muslim and a terrorist with a purely anti-American agenda. He wasn't sure if they were true, but what if they were? Could we really risk having such a radical as our president? Obama was potentially better, but McCain was safer. I chatted with him for a while, and maybe brought him back toward the middle, if not all the way to my side (I, to my surprise, really took to the persuasion part of the job). He was fascinating to me, because he seemed perfectly reasonable and informed, and yet he had been roped in by the extremist noise. Before him, my concept of people who believed those rumors could more or less be summed up as "belligerent redneck." He forced my ideas about that to become more amorphous and open-ended.

The other opinion that comes quickly to my mind was from a conversation that I overheard in a diner. I was waiting for my food while a family next to me discussed the election. Father, mother, parents' friend and older brother were all solidly for McCain. The one holdout was younger brother who I silently cheered on while he held his ground despite attacks from all sides. The quote that forced me to stifle a response and a lot of laughter came from older brother. They were discussing Mr. Obama's shady past when he said something that proved to me that whatever these ideas require to take hold, clear definition of terms is not on the list:
"I don't think Obama is a terrorist, but I think he's maybe a little more of a terrorist than McCain."