Mudslinging madrassah: It’s bad enough having “Hussein” as a middle name, but when the Moonie-owned Insight magazine starts putting it out that you were educated in a radical Muslim school and the New York Post prints the headline “‘Osama’ Mud Flies at Obama,” Barak has to know the campaigning truly has begun. The allegation that
illinois Sen. Barak Obama was indoctrinated in a radical madrassah in Indonesia when he was 6 was also picked up and reported repeatedly on FOX News, with the only source noted as Insight magazine, which conveniently failed to provide its own source.
Worse yet, the FOX folk put it about that it was Hillary Clinton’s people who were slinging the Muslim mud at Obama. It’s a twisted tale, and is likely a precursor to what we can expect as the race heats up and the campaigns typically sink to the lowest common denominator:
Thus, in the first media controversy of the 2008 campaign, two of the leading candidates find themselves forced to respond to allegations lacking a single named source.
“The allegations are completely false,” says Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs. “To publish this sort of trash without any documentation is surprising, but for Fox to repeat something so false, not once, but many times is appallingly irresponsible. This is exactly the type of slash-and-burn politics the American people are sick and tired of.” Obama, aides note, is a Christian and belongs to a Chicago church.
Clinton campaign officials were relieved that what they regard as an absurd allegation was not picked up more widely. “It’s an obvious right-wing hit job by a Moonie publication that was designed to attack Senator Clinton and Senator Obama at the same time,” says Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson. Insight, like the Washington Times, is owned by a company controlled by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon. No one answered the phone at Insight’s office yesterday and its editor did not respond to an e-mail request for comment.
