This is the dumbest shit ever. The idea that the President Obama is partly to blame for the confusion over his religious faith is ridiculous. While Andrew Jackson was our first Trinitarian president, and he only converted after leaving the White House, we have never had any president who professed to believe in any religion other than Christianity or its unitarian offshoots. If we elected a Buddhist or a Jew or a Hindu or a Muslim or a Mormon, everyone would know about it.
If you asked people what religion George W. Bush was, most people would think you were asking whether he was Methodist or Baptist or Episcopalian or Catholic, not whether he was secretly practicing druid rites on the White House lawn in the middle of the night.
People know that Kennedy was Catholic, but most probably can’t identify the correct Protestant sect of our 20th-Century presidents. They just know that they were Christians.
Not Muslims.
Was Laura Bush Russian Orthodox?
If we paid people to spread that rumor, people would start to believe it.
It wouldn’t be Laura’s fault, even though we all know that she loves Dostoyovsky, right?
Right?
“Was Laura Bush Russian Orthodox?
If we paid people to spread that rumor, people would start to believe it.”
I call this phenomenon ROMNESIA. It seems to be a virus
that ONLY infects those without Ethics or character, and my definition is:
ROMNESIA is the sickness among those with NO ethics or Character that if your repeat a statement, any off the wall statement, Enough times, it becomes the TRUTH!
I forget who I named this disease for!
It’s not journalistic malpractice. It’s an outright bullying tactic–blaming the target of a well-planned campaign of delegitimization.
And Nixon was a Quaker and Jimmy Carter was a Southern Baptist. Not that it mattered to policy or the Republican view of the President. In the White House, Clinton was a generic Baptist.
I think the best part is where York quotes himself spreading doubt about the President’s faith. Yeah, no wonder people are confused.
Byron has revealed himself as quite the racist. His frequent spreading of the most racist bile like this serves a strategical purpose for the right wing, but the insultingly inferior level of argumentation he employs in these attacks can only be explained by his personal racism and/or his desire to enable the most racist members of our society. I see those two choices as a distinction without meaningful difference.
Well, no other President received instruction in the Muslim faith as a boy. That’s what gives the story legs. But I do think they should stop beating it to death.
I was given Catholic instruction as a boy, that doesn’t make me Catholic. How is that any different?
But people might legitimately question if you were Catholic. No one asks if Bernie Sanders or Joe Lieberman is Catholic. Nor Muslim.
I could be just as insulted that people continually insist I’m Catholic.
Once a Catholic, always a Catholic. Unless one converts to some other religion. Easy to spot non-religious lapsed Catholics. Most have higher ethical standards than religious folks.
I guess so
Barack’s childhood is part of the seed of the rumor, but it absolutely is not what gives this false rumor legs.
What gives the rumor legs is flat-out prejudice by racist Americans (aka the rank-and-file GOP base), and the financing by the money arm of the right-wing movement of a massive propaganda campaign meant to create white-hot hatred for our President. This acts as the main support strategy of the oligarchs’ comprehensive opposition to the President’s agenda.
That’s why it keeps coming back, all right.
It’s a real hoot, the US and religion, the most godly country on earth—except for what is ungodly about it.
York is reading that unofficial US Constitution that expanded on the requirements to be POTUS. In addition to age 35 and “natural born citizen” (which isn’t precisely defined), there was the WASP-male test. Victoria Woodhull challenged that in 1872 — a joke because women couldn’t even vote. Due to the significant influx of Catholic immigrants in the 19th and early 20th century, the “P” was amended to “main-stream Christian” by 1928. All that civil rights stuff required a further amendment — must meet three out of the four WASC-male criteria.
That “natural born citizen” test could have been dicey for George Romney, but his campaign withered and died before it was an issue. In April 2008, the US Senate passed a non-binding resolution that McCain was eligible for the Presidency, but legally the question is undetermined and became moot when he lost. Legally, Obama passed that test with ease — not that that stopped the delusional and/or exploitative forces on the right from consuming a gillion hours of public dialogue asserting the opposite.
Everybody concedes that Obama obviously fails the “W” criteria. (Just as Palin failed the “male” criteria.) Not even Guiliani wants to touch the “AS” criteria because Obama meets that one better than Rudy does — and too many of the up and coming GOP hopes can’t pass it either. So, York has taken us back to 2008 — Obama must fail the “Christian” criteria and therefore, can’t be considered a fully legitimate POTUS. Doesn’t matter that Lincoln (and a few other prior Presidents) weren’t affiliated with any religious denomination because they were all WASP-males and therefore, could possibly only fail one of the criteria.
The insanity of York and all those that have spent years questioning Obama’s Christian bona fides is that doing so is unconstitutional:
Should have said Skull and Bones rites not druid….