I have a spy within the Southern old boy network. I take guitar lessons every Friday morning from a walking, guitar playing, paradox—a baby boomer who loves the Byrds, Clapton, Traffic and all things ‘60s. But, he’s still a good old Southern boy who can move seamlessly between the world of aging hippies and Southern gentlemen. The good old boys just know my teacher is a bit odd, anyway; he is a musician.
At this morning’s lesson he informed me, “They’re really angry.”
“About what?” I asked, tuning up my guitar.
“About Obama. They’re mad he might win,” said my teacher. “They’re worried that he’s really a Muslim.”
I’m lucky I didn’t snap a string.
“They really believe that?” I asked incredulously.
“Yep,” he said, tuning his own guitar. “I try to tell them it’s not true, but they won’t listen.” (See Daily Show clip below in which, roughly 30 seconds in, John Oliver asks: “Apart from the fact that he isn’t, why is he a Muslim?”)
Apparently, a lot of Texans are like the South Carolina good old boys my teacher hangs with. They don’t listen either. A new poll shows that despite thorough debunking of the myth, 23 percent of Texans believe Obama is a Muslim.
Obama is a Christian who was embroiled in a controversy earlier this year about his two-decade membership in Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ. Yet just 45 percent of those polled identified the Illinois senator as a Protestant. The Obama-is-a-Muslim confusion is caused by fallacious Internet rumors and radio talk-show gossip. McCain went so far at one of his town hall meetings to grab a microphone from a woman who claimed that Obama was an Arab. The Texas numbers are unusual because most national polls show that just 5 to 10 percent of Americans still believe Obama is a Muslim—less than half the number of Texans who buy into the debunked theories.
“Y’know what,” I told my guitar teacher.
“What?” he asked mid sip of his coffee.
“I’d respect those people a lot more if they’d just say they can’t bring themselves to vote for a black man.”
My teacher is still wiping the coffee off the speakers at his shop.
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