So one of my posts in the "Universal Health Care" thread elicited several responses and angry PMs from people upset that I deigned to use the President's middle name. Here's the post:


When is it okay to use the president's middle name? When is it not? Is it "more" okay for one group of people to use his middle name than another? Which group? I imagine the reaction would have been significantly more muted had the post not been made by a white, conservative, southern, male.

What are the parameters that define political correctness?

when a middle name is used unnecessarily for the specific purpose of fear mongering then its usage should be criticized.

It's kind of the whole "do you know the person well enough to understand he's joking" phenomenon.

Personally, you have never shown any signs to my knowledge that would cause any concern, and I have no doubt that your usage was perfectly legitimate. The context of your post wouldn't suggest anything untoward, unless there's something about Muslims and socialized medicine that I'm not aware of.

Dear Doks, you can always call me using my middle name Ferrer. Ferrer is very common in Cuba, but Im not insecure to think you claiming I am a heartless commie.

Muslism are shitty when it comes to medicine, since they have a problem when it comes to fiddle with dead bodies, so the muslim background of Obama clearly makes him retarded to anything related to medicine.

and do you think i was fear mongering with that post?

i mean, i know " " is a loaded emoticon and all...

I cant believe there are RMers who cant grasp that using the full name is just a "this very person" kind of emphasys.

lol. no. i was just answering your question about middle names without regards to context. i was hoping you wouldn't be sure though; i need to be a bit more mysterious i think. i should start posting really non-specific facebook statuses.

i know this doesn't really apply here - it's a message board, and all we have to go on are words - but when did we get to the point where what one says matters more than what one does? al campanis was the first one to volunteer to room with jackie robinson on the road, signed roberto clemente, willie davis, and tommy davis, yet all anyone remembers is his appearance on "nightline."

and again, if one isn't fear-mongering or stoking racial fires, what does it matter if they say the president's full name?

to be honest i was a bit baffled when i saw you had posted that, before Ellis commented on it.

I have no idea what your motives were. Like I said, I was a bit baffled, and really not sure if that was supposed to be a joke or part of your standard snark.

the thing about saying Obama's middle name has nothing to do with political correctness. the reason saying it (rightly) elicits a response is because it isn't normal to spell out a person's middle name, especially in common usage. and of course, you know this damn well thodoks so there is little need of me saying it, but when you are simply referring to a person you say Barack H Obama or Barack Obama.

there is nothing wrong with having the middle name Hussein. it's quite obvious that people who say it on purpose are doing it for a reason, common sense would tell us it's usually nefarious since there is really no other reason someone would say it.

now i don't think you saying it was nefarious, i just think it was completely pointless and unnecessary in N&D, but i have already criticized you for your abundant snark in certain threads so there is no reason for me to do it again. this is just more of what I was talking about when I called you "LW-esque".

lol

are you serious?

i can't remember the last time someone called me or referred to me by my full name. it's been years, easily.

i just want to know: who does that? seriously. how many times during the Bush administration did we have liberals on RM going "LOL George Walker Bush LOL!!!"?

that's not even what's interesting to me. it's that intelligent people have seemingly agreed to unwritten rules that certain words or phrases can only be said by certain people in certain situations. it's okay for anyone and everyone to say "white trash," but the word "nigger" can only be said in a certain context, or by certain people. i can make fun of certain individual traits that one has no control over - height, hair color, features - but not others - race or gender.

why?

height jokes are usually good.

as far as I'm concerned, this has nothing to do with the use of Obama's middle name

but if it matters, i find the issue of political correctness in general to be extremely stupid and backwards, i think in agreement with you

really, i didn't have a motive. i wasn't trying to be provocative or snarky. i was on my way to the bar and was just like, "i need to change the name in the quotes b/c these aren't MiB's words; they're obama's. it'd be funny if i put "hussein" in there." i posted, and then went to happy hour and dinner.

that was the extent of my thought process.


granted it isn't normal. but that's my point. it isn't normal because we're so attuned to seeing and hearing it used in an exclusively negative, accusatory context, because it's been completely taken off the table to use any other time ever. and because it's been cordoned off in such a manner, it's easy for folks to jump to the conclusion that every invocation of the president's middle name must somehow be imbued with similar prejudice. it's precisely because it isn't normal that it SHOULD be used. when intelligent people say "barack hussein obama" innocuously, "hussein" becomes less and less of a loaded term. as far as i'm concerned, using it - and joking about it - strips the term of its ability to provoke and stoke fear.

i guess i also object to being lumped in with the folks who do use "hussein" to race-bait and play on the worst of the people's ignorances. the notion that because they said it to elicit response X, or they hold opinion Y, so too must i is a bit off-putting. i mean, isn't this somewhat symptomatic of the same kind of thought that leads one to conclude that because some muslims are terrorists, all muslims must be terrorists?


no, you're right. i don't remember any of those instances. but my point is that the logic that says invoking the president's middle name is prima facie evidence of racism is the same logic that says obama is a terrorist-sympathizing mooooslim because his middle name is "hussein." i think i'm reacting more to the logic of the criticism than to the criticism itself.

it just blows my mind that this shit matters. i don't care that obama is black. i don't care that obama isn't muslim. i wouldn't care if he was. i guess that, like most, it's troubling that irrelevant shit like someone's race, creed, and color still matters to so many people. it's my opinion, though, that the exact WRONG way to deal with idiots for whom race, sexual orientation, religion, etc matters is to cordon off debate, to say we shouldn't say X or Y. doesn't that only give the word - and its implicit baggage - more significance? shouldn't the goal be to obviate the significance of one's race, sexual orientation, or gender, to make it no more important than any other physical trait or personality idiosyncrasy? and wouldn't it make sense to want to disarm these loaded terms and conversations? to my mind, that means using the terms more, not less. it means putting them on an equal level and joking about them.

i dunno...does that make sense? or am i just rationalizing my behavior?

If your intent was to be funny, then I suppose this seems fine. The consequence is not that people are being truly hurt, but that people are complaining of its use without a victim, no?

the boston office is lucky to have you, fitzy.

Hmmm I guess I missed this last night. If I'm being honest then I'd have to admit that when I see/hear someone use Obama's full name it has 100% of the time been while they are criticizing him and it has always struck me as a technique to throw in a jab at his ancestry/ conjure up the negative connotation that comes with that name to the ears of many Americans because of this country's relationship with the similarly named Sadaam. I'm sure you were probably posting it in a sarcastic manner or something, but I'm not really sure what the real purpose was.

As to your question of why does it matter. Well, who are the people who commonly refer to Obama by his middle name? I'm sure that you will agree with me that most often they are the same people who strongly dislike him, and very often appear to be the same ones involved in nonsensical and irrational arguments against Obama--ie, people who hate him based somewhat on politics, but largely on what they fear that he represents. These fears seem to me to be racist, religiously intolerant, and ignorant, among many other such negative descriptors. Now, does the fact that this segment of the population commonly refers to Obama as "Hussein" make it wrong for others, with no such intentions, to do so? I'm going to make an example, and I know it's an extreme one, but I think the line of thought is similar here. Let's take the swastika. For centuries it was a symbol for various cultures of things such as peace, good will, eternity, etc. Obviously this symbol was eventually adopted by the Nazi party and this forever changed what the symbol means to people. Now you could doodle a swastika on your notebook and correctly claim that this is a peaceful symbol and that you don't intend it to represent hate associated with the Nazis. But judgment and reason would tell us that its best to avoid the situation altogether and simply forego using that symbol, even if we may otherwise want to do so. I think using Obama's middle name is similar. What point can you make by using it that you would otherwise be unable to make? At its most harmless, using his full name while speaking negatively or derogatively of him associates a person with others who do so, and those people are just not ones I want to be associated with at all if I can help it.

Shrugs.

The thing that always struck me about this was how the person saying it always plays dumb when it is pointed out. As you said, in the middle of a discussion about health care, you'll see "B. Hussein Obama's gonna raise your taxes, and steer us towards socialized medicine," etc. etc. And their response is, "what? That is his middle name." (Ann Coulter practically made this an art form during the campaign last year). Why are you treating yourself and everyone else like idiots? You know why you're bringing up his middle name in a completely unrelated discussion. We know why. Everybody knows that it's the connotations that the middle name brings with it. So if you're going to stir racial fears, at least have the guts not to back out of it, with "that's just his middle name." Right.