2008 Woodie Awards
Stand Up!
"Slander by any other name is still slander"
Chris Tezak
Issue date: 1/30/07 Section: Opinions
- Page 1 of 1
So, I know there are people on this campus who do not agree with the things I say. I know because people tell me when I walk around campus. It upsets me, though, how no one writes in with responses. Some people may think I write this column just to hear myself talk, but this is untrue. I write to try to inform, and to get people to talk about the topics.
I want to hear your opinions, whatever they are. It helps me to write and gives people another point of view to think about, so please write in if you feel strongly about something I talk about or anything else in the paper.
OK, now on to this week's topic, one that strikes close to my political home. Recently Insight Magazine, a conservative publication put out by the Washington Times, released a story claiming Illinois Senator Barack Obama attended a conservative madrassa (school of Islam), while he lived in Indonesia.
The report, which was quickly picked up by Fox News, went on to say this particular madrassa preached a form of Islam called Wahhabism, known for its fundamentalist viewpoint. Whether or not he attended this school is of no difference to me, but how Fox News took this report and attacked Obama is where my issue lies.
The show, "Fox and Friends," was the first to talk about the issue. They took calls, used his middle name of Hussein as a smear point and generally made it sound that anyone who is Muslim is a threat to the country. The whole segment oozed racism and ignorance.
My favorite line was from one of the hosts, "We want to be clear, too, that this isn't all Muslims, of course, we would only be concerned about the kind that want to blow us up." After the story was picked up, CNN came along and sent a reporter to the school in question to see if the allegations were true. What they found paralleled what Obama describes in both of his books. The school was not a madrassa, but a state-run public school where religion was taught only sparingly, as it is not [their] focus."
Sen. Obama's office then issued a memo targeting the report and was stern in its language. The memo ended, "These malicious, irresponsible charges are precisely the kind of politics the American people have grown tired of, and that Senator Obama is trying to change by focusing on bringing people together to solve our common problems." The entire sequence of events can be found on www.thinkprogress.org, along with videos of the offending shows. It is just sad how we are two years away from elections and the smear is already flying. Even more upsetting is the racial and religious nature of the attack.
Veteran senator Ted Kennedy issued another attack, of a different sort, last week. The targets of his words were the Senate republicans who are blocking the passage of a minimum wage increase. The video can be found on www.crooksandliars.com and is a great watch, as you rarely see such emotion coming from the Senate.
I want to hear your opinions, whatever they are. It helps me to write and gives people another point of view to think about, so please write in if you feel strongly about something I talk about or anything else in the paper.
OK, now on to this week's topic, one that strikes close to my political home. Recently Insight Magazine, a conservative publication put out by the Washington Times, released a story claiming Illinois Senator Barack Obama attended a conservative madrassa (school of Islam), while he lived in Indonesia.
The report, which was quickly picked up by Fox News, went on to say this particular madrassa preached a form of Islam called Wahhabism, known for its fundamentalist viewpoint. Whether or not he attended this school is of no difference to me, but how Fox News took this report and attacked Obama is where my issue lies.
The show, "Fox and Friends," was the first to talk about the issue. They took calls, used his middle name of Hussein as a smear point and generally made it sound that anyone who is Muslim is a threat to the country. The whole segment oozed racism and ignorance.
My favorite line was from one of the hosts, "We want to be clear, too, that this isn't all Muslims, of course, we would only be concerned about the kind that want to blow us up." After the story was picked up, CNN came along and sent a reporter to the school in question to see if the allegations were true. What they found paralleled what Obama describes in both of his books. The school was not a madrassa, but a state-run public school where religion was taught only sparingly, as it is not [their] focus."
Sen. Obama's office then issued a memo targeting the report and was stern in its language. The memo ended, "These malicious, irresponsible charges are precisely the kind of politics the American people have grown tired of, and that Senator Obama is trying to change by focusing on bringing people together to solve our common problems." The entire sequence of events can be found on www.thinkprogress.org, along with videos of the offending shows. It is just sad how we are two years away from elections and the smear is already flying. Even more upsetting is the racial and religious nature of the attack.
Veteran senator Ted Kennedy issued another attack, of a different sort, last week. The targets of his words were the Senate republicans who are blocking the passage of a minimum wage increase. The video can be found on www.crooksandliars.com and is a great watch, as you rarely see such emotion coming from the Senate.
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