Senator Obama with Chris Matthews

Posted on 03/12/2008 at 9:02 am by Bob Cesca

(h/t Paddy)

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  • lnbno13

    Did he just call him Borama?

  • midad

    Great interview.

  • bajasteve

    Is it just me, or did the video go batshit just as Barack was responding to Matthews’ question about Steve King?

  • midad

    Just watched it again, and it looked to me like Obama was ignoring the idiot remark by King about his middle name (what are we, in grade school with this “Hussein” stuff??). My name is Sarah Lee…and yeah, I’ve lived my life hearing “Nobody doesn’t like Sarah Lee!” It’s a freakin middle name!! and I like it! And Obama was given that middle name by his parents and he does not have to apologize for it. So yeah, he definitely changed the subject and ignored the question. Good for him.

  • http://dansolomon.livejournal.com dansolomon

    I wouldn’t mind seeing him talk about King’s comments a little bit more, next time it comes up- I’ve long thought that the fear of Obama being swiftboated over his name were silly, but one thing that this King asshole accomplishes is he provides the necessary intellectual cover for this line of attack to be something other than just “his name is phonetically similar to bad guys’ names!” Instead it allows people who can swear up and down that they’re not racist a reason to argue against voting for him on the basis of his name, because maybe the terrorists WILL start dancing, and wouldn’t that be awful!I think it’s a mistake to just ignore it, because allowing an intellectualized version of this crass line of attack to gain traction gives it some space in the conventional wisdom- I know if it goes unchallenged right now, three months from now I’m going to be talking to some conservative-leaning but politically-independent friends about Obama and they’ll start talking about how the terrorists will feel happy if someone with a name kinda similar to a name one of them might have wins, and thus, through no fault of Obama’s, they have to vote against him. I’d prefer not to have that conversation, and I think it’d be easy to head-off. Make it about family, and heritage, and pride in one’s name, and the people who are most susceptible to buying this crap will have their buttons pushed in another way.–d

  • mumbles

    He didn’t say Borama, he said “Brown”!

  • mumbles

    He didn’t say “Borama”, he said “Brown”!