FOX & Friends Claims Obama Learned to Hate America in School
On this morning’s edition of FOX & Friends, hosts Steve Doocy, Brian Kilmeade and Gretchen Carlson discussed the “revelation” that Sen. Obama attended a Muslim school as a child in Indonesia, where he lived for four years. The ostensible newsworthiness of this story, they claimed, was that Sen. Obama had not revealed this fact previously. Kilmeade explicitly expressed this justification (”He didn’t admit it, that’s the issue”), as did Carlson (”Something he left out of the book he wrote about his life”).
Except, Sen. Obama DID acknowledge that he attended a Muslim school in Indonesia, as ThinkProgress notes, in his autobiography Dreams from My Father:
In Indonesia, I’d spent 2 years at a Muslim school, 2 years at a Catholic school. In the Muslim school, the teacher wrote to tell mother I made faces during Koranic studies. In the Catholic school, when it came time to pray, I’d pretend to close my eyes, then peek around the room. Nothing happened. No angels descended.
Not that the facts should get in the way of a good verbal lynching. Under this false assumption, the hosts presented this as a political story — what will the ramifications for Sen. Obama be for not having revealed this fact? — and so were free to speculate to their heart’s content about whether it was a “madrassa,” whether he was taught “wahhabism,” and whether or not he was taught that America is evil by people who “want to blow us up.” The hosts were free to cast aspersions on Sen. Obama’s name, on his father, and on his heritage. All of which they did.
See for yourself:
There are so many shocking aspects of this segment. There’s Doocy’s “This is HUGE” exclamation. There’s Kilmeade’s and Carlson’s lies about whether Sen. Obama addressed this in his book. There’s Doocy’s “drip drip drip” comment, and the inane non-stories he lists afterwards. There’s the fact that these folks have a show.
Vermonters for Obama calls this the “Barack Obama as Muslim Manchurian Candidate” meme. Without question, it is a taste of the seedy politics to come. We have to be there every step of the way to set the record straight.
January 20th, 2007 at 3:39 am EST
What would you expect of Fox “news”? The shadowy hitmen of the Republican Party probably already have a negative ad on this in the can!
January 20th, 2007 at 6:49 pm EST
They know that they can beat Hilary and their only hope is that she will defeat him in the primary. If anyone from Hilary’s camp reads these things, I speak for all of the Dem women I know. Get out of the way, sister. You are a politico, not a leader.
January 21st, 2007 at 1:13 am EST
We need to come up with a way responding to people’s fears about Barack’s muslim background. Their fears are clearly unwarranted and unfair. Any ideas?
January 21st, 2007 at 1:27 am EST
It is widely known that Obama lived in Indonesia as a child. Did Faux News think that he just hung out twiddling his thumbs and not go to school? And seeing as how Idonesia is a Muslim country, would it not make sense that he would go to a Muslim school? And if he learned to hate America, why has he spent his entire life in public service trying to make America a better, stronger nation for all of us?