Friday, October 10, 2008

Probing the name game

LET'S PLAY the name game.  You know, the sort of thing that's going on somewhere in America every day as the McCain forces try to shore up their ticket.  The name we are playing in this game?  Hussein.  You've heard of him, I'm sure.  A household word, as in Saddam,  the cruel and corrupt dictator sans WMD's.   And surely by now you have heard that Barack Obama's middle name is Hussein.    Wow.  Reason enough to suspect Barack of being a dangerous Tigris 
 traitor.  And an ignorant one, at that, for urging  his parents to stick him with that name at birth.

To press farther into the darkness of name games, let's consider, say,  George Walker Bush, the current vanishing incumbent.  Walker,  for heaven's sake?  I don't blame you if you don't know where I'm going with a simple, non-threatening Anglo-Saxon  name like Walker.    But in this case, I am recalling Gen. Edwin Walker.   OK, it's no longer a household word.   But wasn't he the much-publicized segregationist who fiercely resisted President Eisenhower's orders to desegregate the schools in Little Rock, a racist John Bircher who later resigned from the army after he was accused of trying to indoctrinate his troops with Birch propaganda?  Oh, you mean that Edwin Walker!    But  why bring that up when it never came up during Dubya's two presidential campaigns?  Makes no sense.  To which I add:  You are right.  It makes no sense, but it does make my point.

I won't even go into my late mother's middle name:  Sarah!   It might not be easy these days, but  RIP, Mom.  Alas, RIP.  

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