I have very few Republican friends. Here in Brooklyn, a very blue part of a pretty blue state, they're few and far between. But my hometown of Amherst, NY leans Republican. And my parents, who still live there, are surrounded by, as Cole Porter would say, devotees of the G.O.P. Still, I was surprised when I was forwarded one of these Obama smear emails -- from my own mom!
Not to worry though. She had gotten it from her book club, a group of ladies of a certain age, and she sent it to me asking for a reply. (Secretly, I think she also wondered if the smears were true.) Here's what she said:
Hi,
Give me answers so I can argue this with my book club ladies. Mom Begin forwarded message:
The email, and my response, after the jump...
Aw, heck. I'm not going to reprint the email. I don't see any point in dignifying it with repetition. It's just a bunch of unsourced accusations and innuendoes that some sort of foreign boogey man paid for Obama's education. No evidence, no logic; just fear and smear.
My response, for the book club ladies:
So let me get this straight. There’s some evil shadowy, visionary secret organization — the Pakistani secret service, or the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, or the K.G.B., or S.P.E.C.T.R.E., or something — who decided in 1981 that a young Barack Obama was the answer to their quest for world domination? And they secretly paid for everything the guy’s ever done for the last twenty-five years? They carefully placed operatives everywhere he went? They secretly trained him to become some sort of Manchurian candidate? And they’re are so good at this spy stuff that there is not one shred of evidence of it, and nobody ever caught on? Not his friends, roommates, teachers and mentors at Columbia? Not his colleagues working sleepless nights with him on the Law Review at Harvard? Not the many, many people – Democrats, Republicans, independents — in Chicago and in Washington who worked closely with him for years on end? Not his wife and daughters? Or are they all supposed to be on the payroll of the Iranians – no, wait, the Syrians – no, wait, the Pakistanis – no, the Iraqis?
Um, not to put too fine a point on it, but isn’t this whole "man from U.N.C.L.E." story a little bit far-fetched?
I’ve got another explanation.
Could it be, maybe, that a Republican party that has dug our country into the biggest hole since the Great Depression, that has trashed the worldwide reputation of not just America but democracy and capitalism itself, that has sunk to the lowest depths of both corruption (Abramoff, Stevens) and perversion (Foley, Craig), that has nominated a ticket that manages to be both dangerously erratic and dangerously inexperienced — could it be that this Republican party has utterly no hope of winning an election on the basis of their record, their policies, or their candidates, and must instead resort to the tired (but, alas, effective) tactics of innuendo, slander, division, and fear?
Naaaaah. That’s crazy talk!
Oh, and by the way, both Barack and Michelle Obama did work-study and took out student loans to pay for college and law school. See the Chicago Sun-Times article: http://www.suntimes.com/...
Do you really want to know, "who is Barack Obama?" Read his book, Dreams of My Father, which he wrote at the age of 34, before he ever ran for elected office. It’s a frank and honest portrait of a bright young man trying to find a meaningful and moral place in the world. And unlike most books by politicians, he actually wrote it himself. Read it and you’ll understand the man. (And incidentally, it was with the proceeds of this unexpectedly best-selling book that he and Michelle were able to buy their house. And unlike some other candidates for president, they only have one!)
The Republican Party, since Nixon, has been winning elections by dividing America — pitting whites against blacks, towns against cities, straights against gays, the middle against the coasts, "real America" against ... other Americans who are every bit as real. But we just can’t afford that kind of politics anymore. With two wars, an economic crisis, a health care crisis, a climate crisis, and a globalizing economy, we need to work together. Only one candidate can make that happen — and that candidate is Barack Obama.
Mom sent it back to that whole list. Thanks Mom!