When did people lose their sense of humour?

Most successful satire images play on a truth about the subject

I only blame the New Yorker for poor judgement.

edgarblythe wrote:

Most successful satire images play on a truth about the subject

As osso pointed out so elegantly, the subject was not the Obamas -- the subject was the loonies who actually believe this stuff about the Obamas. The "truth" there is that wow, there are people who actually believe this stuff, as ridiculous as it is.

edgarblythe wrote:

I only blame the New Yorker for poor judgement.

I don't think it was poor judgment either, though.

Ah well.

And I'm the one who can see that Barack Hussein Obama is, quite clearly, an Islamic name.

Now, douchebrains, who has their head in their ass? Not me.

While I don't think there is anything particularly significant in a name--which is one reason I highly resent the Obama people calling anybody racist who actually uses his name--I wonder why parents of black Kenyan and Indonesian ancestry would give their kid an Arabian name?

One
Minute
Of
Googling
Brings
Answers

Again

Cycloptichorn

One
Minute
Of
Googling
Brings
Answers

Again

Cycloptichorn

Marooon.

Cycloptichorn

While I don't think there is anything particularly significant in a name--which is one reason I highly resent the Obama people calling anybody racist who actually uses his name--I wonder why parents of black Kenyan and Indonesian ancestry, with Muslim roots, would give their kid an Arabian name?

Jesus wept.

Googling doesn't answer my question. I've now read both of Obama's books and read the history--I know where he got his name. But Kenya is one of the few African nations that is not despotic and in which Islam is a fairly small minority and Arabs make up less than 1% of the population.

So.....as Obama's Kenyan family goes back at least as far as his grandfather and his grandfather and father were Muslim, are Barack and Hussein common names in Kenya? Or are they family names descending from and related to Islamic roots? I am not at all suggesting Obama is Muslim as there is no evidence that he is. I'm pretty sure considering his ancestry and his name that the Islamic world sees him much more as one of them than any other of our national leaders however.

I honestly wondered if anybody knew since Cyclop was so certain that Obama's name was not chosen as an Islamic name but rather simply an Arabic one.

Demographics of Kenya:
Facts and Statistics

Location: Eastern Africa, bordering the Indian Ocean, between Somalia and Tanzania.
Capital: Nairobi.
Climate: varies from tropical along coast to arid in interior.
Population: 36,913,721 (estimated - July 2007.)
Ethnic Make-up: Kikuyu 22%, Luhya 14%, Luo 13%, Kalenjin 12%, Kamba 11%, Kisii 6%, Meru 6%, other African 15%, non-African (Asian, European, and Arab) 1%.
Religions: Protestant 45%, Roman Catholic 33%, Muslim 10%, indigenous beliefs 10%, other 2%.
Government: republic

Pre-colonial history

Cushitic-speaking people, as termed by Schloezer, from northern Africa, moved into the area that is now Kenya beginning around 2000 BC. Arab traders began frequenting the Kenya coast around the 1st century AD. Kenya's proximity to the Arabian Peninsula invited colonization, and Arab and Persian settlements sprouted along the coast by the 8th century. During the first millennium AD, Nilotic and Bantu-speaking peoples moved into the region, and the latter now comprise three-quarters of Kenya's population.

In the centuries preceding colonization, the Swahili coast of Kenya was part of the east African region which traded with the Arab world and India especially for ivory and slaves (the Ameru tribe is said to have originated from slaves escaping from Arab lands some time around the year 1700.). Initially these traders came mainly from Arab states, but later many also came from Zanzibar (such as Tippu Tip).

Swahili, a Bantu language with many Arabic, Persian and other Middle Eastern and South Asian loan words, developed as a lingua franca for trade between the different peoples.

Is this really the best that Obama's opponents can do? And shouldn't a seasoned political reporter like Mike Allen have done just a little bit of legwork to investigate this alleged inconsistency? Many voices in the blogosphere, such as Brad DeLong, Matthew Yglesias, and The Poor Man, pounced on Allen's story to make a very simple point: there is no inconsistency in Obama's interpretations, since "Barack" is rooted in both Arabic and Swahili. Swahili has an enormous number of loanwords from Arabic, and "Bara(c)k" is pretty obviously one of them. It's derived from the Arabic triliteral B-R-K (برك), the morphological basis for many words having to do with the act of blessing. Commenting on Crooks and Liars, bulbul (one of the erudite regulars in Languagehat's comment section) provides this helpful background:

I'd venture a guess and say that Obama's name comes from "baaraka" (بارك), a III. form verb which most often crops up in the phrase "baarak(a) Allaah fiik" (بارك الله فيك) meaning "may God bless you" or even "thank you". My Swahili dictionary lists "barak(a)" as a noun meaning "blessing, prosperity, abundance".
The Arabic for "blessed" is "mubaarak" (مبارك), as in the surname of the Egyptian president.
So to recap: Barak Obama's first name is both Swahili (as it is a part of Swahili lexicon) and Arabic (since it is Arabic by origin).

I'm pretty sure considering his ancestry and his name that the Islamic world sees him much more as one of them than any other of our national leaders however.

I'm in an argument on a local Obama email list about whether a (bigger) stink should be made about it. They're shooting for an apology from the New Yorker or a sticker (!) on the cover or something. I think that's flat-out ridiculous, and counterproductive.