Redstate

By Dana R Pico Comments (6) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

I wrote an article on my site concerning the CNN foul-up with the "Where's Obama" instead of the "Where's Osama" blurb in a rather light-hearted manner; I was joking when I suggested that it was a conspiracy on the part of Senatrix Clinton, since CNN used to be known as the "Clinton News Network," due to its fawning coverage of President and Mrs Clinton. I wasn't seriously suggesting a conspiracy!

And then I read Sharon's article on her site, and I began to wonder. She linked to a Media Matters article concerning Debbie Schlussel's infamous questions about whether Barack Hussein Obama might be an Islamist in disguise.

Schlussel's column fits into a larger pattern in the recent media coverage and commentary regarding Obama. Indeed, like Schlussel -- who has repeatedly appeared on MSNBC in the past -- numerous media figures have gone out of their way to highlight Obama's middle name in recent weeks:

During MSNBC's special election coverage on November 7, co-anchor Chris Matthews remarked that Obama's "middle name is Hussein" and suggested that it would "be interesting down the road."

On November 27, MSNBC host Tucker Carlson referred to radio host Bill Press as "a true member of the Barack Hussein Obama fan club."

During the November 28 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, Republican strategist Ed Rogers referred to "Barack Hussein Obama."

On the December 5 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume, senior political correspondent Carl Cameron told viewers: "Though he's written two books about himself already, most people know very little about Barack Hussein Obama Junior's uncommonly privileged life."

On the December 11 edition of CNN's Situation Room, correspondent Jeanne Moos noted that "[o]nly one little consonant differentiates" Obama and Osama. She then added, "[A]s if that similarity weren't enough. How about sharing the name of a former dictator? You know his middle name, Hussein."

On the December 11 edition of The Situation Room, CNN senior political analyst Jeff Greenfield compared the similarity of Obama's "business casual" clothing to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's "jacket-and-no-tie look." Greenfield concluded the segment by saying: "Now, it is one thing to have a last name that sounds like Osama and a middle name, Hussein, that is probably less than helpful. But an outfit that reminds people of a charter member of the axis of evil, why, this could leave his presidential hopes hanging by a thread." He later explained on the CNN website that he was making "a joke."

On December 13, Matthews teased another interview with Rogers by describing the strategist as "the one who just loves Barack Obama's middle name Hussein."

On the December 14 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio program, Rush Limbaugh gave Obama a "nickname" -- "Barack Hussein Odumbo" (in reference to Obama's "big ears").

On the December 14 edition of Hardball, NBC's Mike Viqueira announced "a man named Barack Obama, whose middle name, incidentally, is Hussein, running for president."

And now we have the new CNN foul-up.

It's pretty difficult to picture a conspiracy which includes Rush Limbaugh, Debbie Schlussel, Jeff Greenfield, Mike Viqueira, Carl Cameron, and Chris Matthews. But it doesn't need to include the conservatives; they are going to be making their subtle, and not-so-subtle, digs at Senator Obama anyway.

But, if we grant that the conservatives are part of the action by their own volition rather than any need to include them in a conspiracy, simply the number of liberals who have made these little digs and mistakes makes me start to wonder: could there actually be something going on here?

Now don't get me wrong: I was perfectly upfront about saying that the inclusion of Mr Obama's middle name was legitimate, and that I intended to do so. I have not changed my mind about that in the least.

Is this really coincidental? It gets pretty difficult to picture the recent CNN foul up as a typographical error: the "s" and the "b" aren't exactly adjacent to each other on a standard keyboard. And you've got to be nearly brain-dead to be an American adult who doesn't know who Osama bin Laden is. Are we expected to believe that a trained control room employee and a professional director and the other pros at CNN all just flat missed this?

Yeah, it could be just a series of mistakes and inobservant performance of duty which resulted in this, and I am not in any position to know differently. But such, quite frankly, strains credulity just a little bit.

I don't know that this was intentional, and I don't know that this was somehow orchestrated, and, quite frankly, I'm not really the conspiracy theory type. But this one certainly leaves me wondering about it.

Especially when one of CNN's at least formerly favored people would be a reasonable beneficiary of such?

It just doesn't smell quite right.
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Cross posted on Common Sense Political Thought.