Did You Hear That His Full Name Is Barack HUSSEIN Obama? Conservative Won't Let You Forget

[JABBS]

Click here to read the whole story.

<snip>

Will all the conservative scare tactics work?

The Chicago Tribune asked that question this week. The answer, apparently, is "not always."

"People have unconscious, emotional reactions to names," Cleveland Kent Evans, a psychologist who studies the practice and effect of naming, told the Tribune. "And there's a lot of psychological research that shows people do a lot of unconsciously prejudiced things. But most people do not think of themselves as biased. And when those things become conscious, when they realize they're in danger of doing something against their values, it may be more likely that they're going to behave the opposite way."

In other words, if the conservative talking heads and radio ranters play the scare card too often, it's bound to backfire.

[Lex]

1. I guess Repuke talking heads are hoping Americans are stupid

enough to be scared by Obama's middle name.

I think Americans have started to wake up to Repuke tactics, at least to some degree.

[JABBS]

15. that's what the psychologist says

that once it becomes obvious, it loses its power to scare.

[Taverner]

2. Shit ain't gonna fly this time

Maybe if Rove didn't cry wolf so many times it might have, but even with the dumbest population in the world, you can only cry wolf a limited number of times before people catch on.

"You can fool some of the people some of the time..."

[rfranklin]

3. I know a lot of guys named Jesus and the Repubs don't like them...

They are very confused about names.

[Nederland]

Not sure it matters much

I wonder how many people actually know Saddam's last name...

[TexasProgresive]

4. How many times are you going to post this?

You are close to entering an exclusive club of 2 - my ignore list. It's bad enough that DU is cluttered with people putting up duplicate threads without some yahoo duplicating his own.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x3031030

[JABBS]

17. I was told several months ago

That it was ok to post something twice, as long as it wasn't at the same time. I posted it once last night on one thread, and again this morning on a second thread.

And I'm not "some yahoo."

[Judi Lynn]

26. PATHETIC! There was a duplicate to the one you linked posted a week or two ago!

Too foolish to be possible, isn't it? Jeezus Christ.

[JABBS]

34. untrue

I just wrote the thing yesterday. I mentioned the quote from the GOP analyst on Hardball about a month ago, but it was a small part of a larger post on a variety of candidates.

[EFerrari]

5. The bigoted 30 percenters always react the same way.

Why do we spend so much time on them? This isn't about conservatives, it's about morans.

[quinnox]

6. Hussein Obama ,a black man

will never be elected president. His name isn't the only obstacle, the more important one is his race.
honestly, does anyone think that millions of southerners who were brought up to think of black people as less than them by racist parents would vote for a black man for president... ever? And not just the south either.

[Telly Savalas]

21. How many of those millions of racist fuckbags would vote for another

Democrat?

If we're in such sorry shape that their votes a crucial, should we lynch people to win their sympathies?

[Bake]

7. Obama could - and should - nip this in the bud right now!

Just come out and say, "YES. My name is Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. That was my father's name, and I am proud it's my name. I am an American. If this is all you people have to come at me with, you may as well go home, since you obviously cannot debate the REAL ISSUES. Fear and innuendo, that's all you people know, and YOU OUGHT TO BE ASHAMED. That is all."

If he doesn't, and soon, he's going to do just what Kerry did with the Swift Liars.

Bake

[niyad]

8. and just how many people bear that particular name? isn't it about as common in some areas as, say,

george or richard or karl in other places? or, as another poster pointed out, jesus (which the boyking probably cannot pronounce anyway)

[mntleo2]

9. Yeah And My Grandmother's Name was "Lizzie"

So does having the same name make her the same as Lizzie Borden who "took and ax and gave her mother 40 whacks"? Come on! So WHAT??????

Gawd these freepers make me sick. I would start picking out their names and comparing them to some notorious criminal. Your name is Ted? Well then, YOU must be JUST LIKE Ted Bundy! When was the last time you killed and dismembered any underage prostitutes? Why aren't you on death row, you wing nut pervert!?

GAWD! Their stooooooopidity is unending!

Cat in Seattle

[Deep13]

10. That was his parents' second choice for a middle name.

Their first choice was Barack Hilterstalintojomoa Obama.

Just kidding, of course.

[Marr]

11. Hey, if a guy named after uncontrolled pubic hair can be President-

I don't see their point.

[Rosemary2205]

25. Huh???

It's a riddle and I can't figure it out. Hint please?????

[Marr]

29. Eh?

Bush- you know. :)

[Rosemary2205]

30. Um

Aren't bushes those green things that grow around my house??

Must be a generational thing...... :shrug:

[CrispyQ]

12. "People have unconscious, emotional reactions to names."

Yeah, every time I hear the name "Bush" I feel like puking.


Honestly, if people let something like this keep them from supporting Obama then we are more fucked than even I imagined.

[never cry wolf]

13. You mean Barry Obama?

I found some interesting articles whan I googled Obama's sister's name, Maya Soetoro.

Apparently he was known as Barry back in the day:

"I could see he was bound for bigger things," said longtime friend, classmate and football teammate Bobby Titcomb. "He looked at the world more globally than the rest of us. There was something driven about him.

"But he also played basketball, tennis and hung out at the beach with the rest of us."

"He loves Hawaii and comes back with Michelle (his wife) and the girls whenever he can," said his sister, Maya Soetoro, who teaches history and social studies at the UH Lab School.

"My brother had it together at an early age. He had a strong sense of ethics, but with humor, literature, poetry, music, a sense of what's important in the world," she said.

After earning his bachelor's degree in political science from Columbia University in 1983, Obama went to work as a community organizer in Chicago's South Side.

Titcomb, 42, now a commercial fisherman and Northwest Airlines flight attendant living in Kailua, remembers visiting Obama in Chicago shortly after his friend had moved there.

"Barry told me, 'I really want to be able to do something for the community, but to do what is necessary I'll need a law degree,'" Titcomb recalled. "That's why he applied to Harvard. It was never about making money for Barry. That's never what motivated him."

http://starbulletin.com/2004/03/21/news/story4.html

[warrens]

14. It's already backfiring bigtime

Every repuke who brings it up on something other than Fox gets laughed off the set.

[JABBS]

18. but don't discount the power of

rush limbaugh, mark levin, ann coulter, laura ingraham, michael savage, etc., who have their own audiences, free from debate or reason.

[MurrayDelph]

16. Gerald Ford's middle name was Rudolph

...doesn't mean he was a reindeer.

[rustydog]

19. Isn't Sean ADOLPH Hannity always saying it is ok to use middle names?

[Sapphire Blue]

20. Welcome to my ignore list.

[Skidmore]

22. Republican scare tactics work because we don't push back on them.

No one calls them on this crap.

[Bluebear]

23. Yes, we have heard it many times here, thanks. nt

[blueblitzkrieg]

24. my co-workers and i were talking about this a couple days ago

everyone agreed that it was petty and makes the rethugs look bad. i agree it's going to backfire. it just makes the gop look pathetic and desperate (which they are)

[SemperEadem]

27. but they're going to try hard

because there are still enough stupid, dumb americans who WILL buy into this--I'm sure Christmas dinners all across the countries were regaled with stories about how Obama is really a distant cousin of bin Laden and he's just waiting with his trojan horse to be electe before he unleashes the marauding hordes upon this country.

Fear is the drug of choice of the people who buy into this kind of crap.. and they are on their knees every night, lips locked firmly on the source, sucking away as if their lives depended upon it--because they believe they do.

[Nikki Stone1]

28. Hmm. What do talk radio types think of our commander in the Iraq theater, Gen. Abazaid?

He has a Lebanese background. I guess that's ok, though.

Actually having a guy named Hussein (at least as a middle name) in the White House could make ME policy interesting. I wonder how our allies and enemies would react to that? Sort of like having an Eastern European in the Papacy.

[Initech]

31. We should laugh at the conservatives and point out how ridiculous their logic is.

[Doctor_J]

32. Neither will the DUers, it seems

there have been at least 15 threads about it here.

STOP listening to hate radio, and if you can't do that,

STOP posting everything they say on DU.

[JABBS]

35. that's not a healthy approach

and it's not an accurate reflection of the linked story. The set-up of the story is that the right-wing is doing this. The follow-up, which I don't think has been on DU before but is in the teaser to the link, is that a noted psychologist explained why the right-wing tactic probably won't work.

i think that does have some value as a conversation starter.

[liberalEd]

33. ... it's bound to backfire ...

And I think this is something that eventually the senator can take political advantage of.

I'm thinking of speech, or an ad, where he talks directly to America and asks "are really that shallow and that bigoted that you would deny me a vote because of my middle name?"

Of course he's more articulate than I am, and would probably phrase it better.