This article in Salon is really cute. It’s about candidates who wear the flag pin non-stop seem to be the ones dropped out of the race the fastest, so maybe the best explanation for why Obama opts out is that he doesn’t want to lose.
Do we see a subtle pattern emerging here? Every presidential candidate of both parties who ever wore a lapel flag during the debates, even as briefly as Biden, bought himself a one-way ticket to Palookaville.
And every major party candidate who remains viable today — John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama — has seldom if ever been spotted with a flag in his or her lapel….
Dosed with Pentothal, each would most likely come up with a variant of the answer Obama had hinted at: that lapel flags no longer signify simple patriotism, but something that you don’t want sticking to your fingers these days.
For these past six years and more, men with those bright little flags apparently riveted to their lapels have fed the voters a daily diet of fear, secrecy, lies and a cruel war with neither point nor end.
No sensible politician would want to march under this tiny, metallic banner. Just look at all the fallen stars who did.
But what I found interesting was that while the writer noticed that McCain, Huckabee, and Clinton all go without the lapel pin, only Obama gets shit for it, he didn’t offer any explanations as to why. Maybe he thinks everyone knows why, but I’m not sure it’s universal knowledge as to what right wingers who give a shit are getting at. Complaining about Obama’s non-existent flag pin is a classic right wing dog whistle, like Bush mentioning the Dred Scott decision during a debate as a hat tip for those who think so little of black people’s historical sufferings that they compare that to the sufferings of embryos who, unlike actual black persons, can’t feel or think or have personalities and families and friends who love their unique selves.
In this case, the flag pin dust-up is a hat tip to the right wing belief that Obama is secretly a Muslim. I mean, they’ve got a slew of “evidence” to this secret Muslim status, but while pundits will occasionally bring up these spurious claims during debates, I’ve not seen anyone make the direct link between his not wearing a flag pin and his supposedly secret Muslim status. The bullshit rumors about him not saying the Pledge, yes, but those are open lies, so a lot easier to shut down. The background on this is that every time a Muslim person or family resists compulsory patriotism for various religious reasons—some people just have an issue with the Pledge, because it has a blatantly Christian prayer injected into it, and some might have other reasons—it becomes hot news on the right wing email circuit, and has since forever. It’s part of reaffirming the belief that America is rightfully a Christian theocracy, and that the flag and the Pledge are equal parts symbols of Christianity and America. Black Muslims especially are considered suspicious.
It’s this sort of thing that makes me wonder why blatant sexism aimed at Hillary Clinton is dragged out as evidence that America is more sexist than racist. Sure, you can call women dumb out loud in this country, but I’m not sure that racist insinuations are any better. In some respects, I prefer the open insult to the insinuation, because it’s easier to push back. Fury rained upon the WaPo because of Charlotte Allen’s ridiculous article, but if she’d stuck to stating her points more obliquely, she could hide behind plausible deniability. But the insinuations that Obama’s race and background and lapel pin means that he’s a secret Muslim terrorist sympathizer is going to be a lot harder to push back against.
First of all, you have to call it out. But how do you say, “No, he’s not!” without insinuating either that being a Muslim is bad or that all Muslims are secret terrorist sympathizers? It’s nearly impossible. The Obama campaign has decided to push back by drawing attention to the fact that he’s a Christian, which while the most politically obvious thing to do, does carry this insinuation that it would be a bad thing if he were a Muslim. Naomi Klein has called out the campaign for this.
Of course Obama must correct the record, but he doesn’t have to stop there. What is disturbing about the campaign’s response is that it leaves unchallenged the disgraceful and racist premise behind the entire “Muslim smear”: that being Muslim is de facto a source of shame. Obama’s supporters often say they are being “Swiftboated,” casually accepting the idea that being accused of Muslimhood is tantamount to being accused of treason.
Substitute another faith or ethnicity, and you’d expect a very different response. Consider a report from the archives of this magazine. Thirteen years ago, Daniel Singer, The Nation’s late, much-missed Europe correspondent, went to Poland to cover a hotly contested presidential election. He reported that the race had descended into an ugly debate over whether one of the candidates, Aleksander Kwasniewski, was a closet Jew. The press claimed his mother had been buried in a Jewish cemetery (she was still alive), and a popular TV show aired a skit featuring the Christian candidate dressed as a Hasidic Jew. “What perturbed me,” Singer wryly observed, “was that Kwasniewski’s lawyers threatened to sue for slander rather than press for an indictment under the law condemning racist propaganda.”
We should expect no less of the Obama campaign. When asked during the Ohio debate about Louis Farrakhan’s support for his candidacy, Obama did not hesitate to call Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic comments “unacceptable and reprehensible.” When the turban photo flap came up in the same debate, he used the occasion to say nothing at all.
She has a point, but there’s a couple of wrinkles there that we all know are there, and pretending they aren’t there isn’t going to help matters. One issue is the sincerity problem. It’s well understood that saying, “I’m not X, but there’s nothing wrong with being X,” often sounds mealy-mouthed, and often casts a shadow over the latter part of the statement. Try it at home. “I’m not a lesbian, not that there’s anything wrong with that!” You’re questioning my sincerity, against your will, even though you know that I’m sincere, right? We’re conditioned to considered that construction insincere.
The second problem is that the retort to a slur is best handled by being even shorter and to the point than the slur, lest the latter wins on comprehensibility issues. Which is to say, people have short attention spans. What’s more likely to get across to a large number of people? Saying, “I’m not a Muslim, I’m a Christian,” or saying, “Let me preface this by saying that accusing someone of having a different religious faith than the majority in America should hardly be considered an insult in a secular democracy, and my fellow Muslim citizens have equal right as I do to hold office, and as much ability, but in this particular case, the rumors being spread about me are untrue, though even if they were true, it shouldn’t matter.”
Cue the pundits giggling about the wordy, nerdy Democrats while swooning over John McCain’s baby back ribs recipe and talking about how it’s so cool to have a candidate to drink a beer with this time around who can actually drink the beer because he’s not a recovering alcoholic. Democrats have to be careful in this hostile media environment to avoid the use of dependent clauses, lest they get burdened with the too-smart-to-share-a-beer reputation.
The campaign is seeking ways to get out the message that even though Obama isn’t a Muslim, that Muslims are not bad people, all without bogging down the campaign with this issue. But it’s going to be a long haul. The complexities that visit someone trying to refute these rumors are precisely why Republican operatives are not about to let go of spreading these rumors. It’s win-win for them—either the candidate is tacitly complicit with racism (like Klein is accusing Obama of being) or the candidate is a wordy stick in the mud and look-McCain-the-war-hero. Nerd-baiting Democrats is the media’s favorite game, and part of why Clinton is flailing is that she fucking fell for it, the same way that Al Gore did, and is successfully getting portrayed as the petulant nerd.
By the way, I’d take this story about how Karl Rove told the wingnut press not to call Obama by his middle name with a grain of salt. This is a pretty classic Republican trick to create a space of plausible deniability between the official Republican party and the right wing operatives. It’s about letting McCain both take advantage of racism while keeping him clean of being called a racist. But I doubt that Rove actually wants the Limbaughs of the world to hold back on the racist rumor-mongering.
22 Responses to “On pins and complex racist rumor-mongering”
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I got the Obama is SEKRITLY MUSLIM email a few weeks back from a relative. And I fired back a missive noting the inaccuracies of this report…but as you say, it’s hard to rebut without implying that being Muslim is a bad thing.
Here’s the text of my email though:
Dear Family:
I see that this particular email has finally wended its way to me, and I feel that I have to respond. First of all, the contents of this email are false and have been debunked by many sources. The urban legend and debunking website Snopes goes through this email on a point by point basis: http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/muslim.asp
While some of the details about Obama’s family life, regarding his parents divorce and his mother’s role in his upbringing are true, the implications this email draws about his purported Muslim upbringing are false. Many reputable news outlets have investigated, and Obama himself identifies as Christian. Obama did not take his oath on a Koran (that was Keith Ellison of Minnesota, on a Koran that was once owned by Thomas Jefferson and provided by the Library of Congress.)
Regardless of Obama’s religious beliefs, I’m going to re-emphasise that our Constitition wisely provides that there shall be no establishment of religion inside the government. This is often widely misinterpreted but what this means is that we have no religious test for candidates. And furthermore, this a good thing. I’m going to point out that of recent times, Mitt Romney himself had a hard time garnering support from Southern voters in particular because he wasn’t, according to them, a Christian–and they’ve been supporting Mike Huckabee in droves. Mike Huckabee is a Dominionist who is interested in re-writing the Constitution in line with his Christian beliefs, and he has said as much in interviews. While this may sound attractive to many people, I might remind my LDS family that those people do not find Mormons to be Christian, and if Huckabee’s supporters had their way, no Mormons would be able to hold high office for similar reasoning to this email’s illogic. Any citizen of this country should be able to run for any office, from city councilperson to President, without having to belong to a particular religion. The Constitution itself says so, and our Founding Fathers who ranged from Deists to Episcopalians to Quakers to Catholicism recognised this.
This email questions Obama’s faith, but really, who has the right to do that? How did you feel when many accused Mitt Romney of wearing his faith on his sleeve? But again, I point out that we have no religious test for office in this nation. This nation was founded on religious tolerance.
Finally, this email goes on to question Obama’s connections with the Muslim world. I will reiterate once more that those have been debunked, but we currently have a President who has his very own affectionate nickname for a member of Saudi royal family (”Bandar Bush”), and a Congress who has turned a blind eye to the human rights violations perpetuated by our allies in the Middle East. (Notably Saudi Arabia, whose treatment of women is abominable.)
One perhaps irrelevant point: This email purports to be the words of a William H. Shay, a Yale officer. A little research shows that no such person exists at Yale. I only note this because not only does this perpetuate the fallacy of False Authority, but the authority in question doesn’t even exist. However, I feel this is largely irrelevant, considering my earlier points about the nature of our Constitution.
I understand that the electoral process is very important and you are all naturally concerned about many issues, but I would urge you to do more research on those very issues before forwarding any more emails containing deliberately charged language designed to smear the reputation of a candidate. Voting on the issues, such as health care, education, the environment, and our relationship to the global community, is the best course, I feel. This email is a fabricated bogeyman.
Thanks.
I’m going to point out the reason for focusing so heavily on Mitt Romney is because my family is Mormon, and it was the closest example I could draw from to drive the point home in a way they would understand, ie There is no religious test for office in this country and there never should be.
Semi-happy ending to this story: My grandmother sent around another email pointing out that she had been misled. My Mormon little brother also emailed people at almost the same time I did saying that even if Obama was Muslim he had a right to run for office. Several of my aunts and uncles also emailed me and more or less said, “Way to go.” They’re still all nominally Republican, but they evidently have given the issue more thought.
The best succinct response to this type of crap that doesn’t appear to condone the bigotry is that ascribed to Charlie Chaplin when anti-Semites called him a Jew to his face: “I’m sorry, I’ve never had that honour”.
Wasn’t wearing the flag illegal until recent memory? I seem to remember that it was verboten on military uniforms because it was considered disrespectful.
If the stakes were not so high, it would be interesting to see just how low the Rethugs will go to get their puppet into office.
As it is, I’m already getting ill thinking about the baseless attacks on Obama to come (bad), and the realization that some significant percentage of Americans will either be stupid enough or racist/bigoted enough to buy the spin.
It’s gonna be a very long time ’til November…
“Jingo Flags, Jingo Flags, Jingo all the way…”
It looks like Obama has started responding in a way that reduces the Muslim as smear argument. In the 60 Minutes piece that Clinton has gotten such shit for the last couple of days, Obama talks about how the accusation that he’s a Muslim insults Muslims as well. The video is here, and the section I’m talking about is about 1:25 into the piece.
Great post. I think you’re spot-on about the whole Muslim-baiting issue — it works so well specifically because either response can so easily be a win for the people spreading the rumor.
I’m not ready to draw conclusions about whether the racism or sexism on display in this election is worse, either, especially given the different approach being taken to each. This, again, is an unfortunate win-win for the racist patriarchy; a candidate who’s easy to cast as a threat due to their identity (like Hillary) can be set up for blatant, outright slurs and vitriol, while a candidate who’s easier to cast as an unthreatening exception (like Obama) can be treated in ways that subtly poison the dialogue.
Ms. Kate,
The American Legion lays out a lot of rules about how to properly fly the flag, including that a flag shouldn’t be worn as an item of clothing (ala Abbie Hoffman). That’s not the same as saying you can’t fly a replica, such as the flag patches worn by astronauts.
“Nerd-baiting Democrats is the media’s favorite game, and part of why Clinton is flailing is that she fucking fell for it, the same way that Al Gore did, and is successfully getting portrayed as the petulant nerd. ”
Remember, it worked especially well with Gore and Kerry because the GOP tried to argue it both ways: Gore is a nerd but isn’t smart, because he dropped out of Vanderbilt twice*, and Kerry is a nerd but isn’t smart, because Bush got better grades than him and Harvard Business School is better than Boston College Law.** I suppose they can run on “Hillary is so smart that she flunked the DC bar” too (although I have a VERY hard time believing it’s “one of the easier bar exams” as the spin goes.) They have nothing really to run with for Obama of this sort.
* Is this really true? I’ve heard he was just supposed to complete two years of postgraduate study as part of his reporter service or something, and he just so happened to take the first year each of law school and divinity school.
** Apples and oranges, because business school is mostly experience-based and law school is mostly LSAT/GPA based. There are BC Law students who could never get into HBS, and vice versa.
I’d personally like to see an answer along the lines of, “I’m not, but why would it matter if I were?”
And apparently believe that slaveowners were forced to carry physically and feed their slaves for the first nine months of ownership.I’d personally like to see an answer along the lines of “Go f*ck yourselves.” Might as well call it as he sees it.
It’s gonna be a very long time ’til November…
Yes, but the countdown is on.
loneoak…
That’s the point…
It’s a whispering campaign. Obama can’t exactly use overt agression or shaming in the manner of “go fuck yourselves.”
Republicans have accused Democrats of disloyalty since the post-Civil War era. Why should they stop now?
A relevant quote that I’ve seen attributed to various people: “It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the flag.”
I think the original is due to F. M. Hubbard, but can’t find a reliable source.
To be fair, for a long chunk of that period, it was a reasonable claim.
I prefer the insinuations (or as Richard Daley would call them, “the insinuendos.”) Or rather, I think that a lot of the blatant sexist remarks against Hillary also double as insinuations against all women. “Pimping out” is nasty language, so someone might get suspended over that, but, hey, some women really ARE overemotional, cold, calculating, unlikable bitches with cackling laughs, and calling them out on it doesn’t mean it’s a stereotype about ALL women or anything.
Of course, Rush’s monkey thing shows that some of the racists aren’t even bothering with the subtlety of insinuations.
PixelFish, that’s an excellent response - but it does make clear how difficult this is to do in a brief, sound-bitish comment. Good to hear your family responded positively/thoughtfully.
It is rather horrific that it would be just as bad for Obama’s chances of getting elected if he were to say “It’s of no consequence what my religion is” than if he were to say “It’s of no consequence what my sexual orientation is” in response to charges that he’s gay.
i really really wish that Obama DID turn out to be a muslim. then we can (maybe, a little) get over the idea that ALL muslims are just like the fuckers who attack women and tall buildings (you know, just like ALL christians are just like the fundies here who think a fetus is more important that a person…)
and then we also will have jumped the “never had a non-christian” in highest office hurdle (and yes, catholics ARE TOO christian)
but yeah, not gonna happen…
“i really really wish that Obama DID turn out to be a muslim.”
This statement SO reminds me of “In and Out.”
Yeah, I’m firmly in the “Muslim president, who cares?” camp. Does the party really want to be beholden to and garner the votes of people who think that Muslims are
(a) inherently unpatriotic
(b) universally fundamentalist theocrats who have a Borg-like collective aspiration to go about breakin’ into ur democracy, steelin ur country?
Instead of tripping over ourselves for their patronage at the expense of Muslim Democrats feeling unwelcome to ascend the political ranks if they feel so inclined because they don’t fit some ridiculous “All-American” poster child image, shouldn’t those types be the ones that get the engraved card inviting them to “Please, get off of our side”?
It works for Clinton too, though. I got into a disagreement with someone this weekend because I said it was sexist to call Clinton “Catty”. He said “I can take that way if I want to, but it’s really silly because that’s not what he meant and he has TOO called men catty”. I don’t ever know how to argue with this stuff, because it involves a lot of talk about the nature of language, and it being a social product, so individual intention doesn’t mean as much as general perception, but then people glaze over and say I’m being pendantic.