Why is Being Called an Arab a Smear?

Image via WikipediaI'm watching the weekend news shows and catching up on my political blogs and one thing I have noticed is that there is a lot of coverage of a McCain rally where McCain corrects a woman's comment about Obama. Her comment was that she feared Obama because he was an Arab.

The media tagline of this event was that the woman "attacked" or smeared Obama. Why is being called an Arab or a Muslim a smear and not simply a mis-characterization? Why would this be newsworthy? Would we be saying an Muslim candidate who was mis-characterized as a Christian was being smeared? Probably not.


Early in the campaign, during the primaries, chain emails filled in boxes with rumors that Obama was an Arab, a Muslim, or that he secretly conspired with Muslims to destroy the US. We (informed) Americans know these are far from the truth, so why are media pundits and bloggers pounding on this old issue? It is time to not let ridiculous statements like this get anymore national attention.


McCain's response to the crowd after he took the mic back from the woman was to say that Obama is actually a good guy. Is that to say if one is an Arab they cannot be a good guy? McCain should have said that no, Obama is not an Arab, and that there is nothing to fear from Arabs, that he knows Arabs and has worked with many Arabs in Washington D.C. including Sen. George Mitchell.

The response from people should be akin to Sinfield's now famous quote, no..."not that there is anything wrong with that." There is nothing wrong with being Muslim or Arab in America.

I do not remember these outragous statements being made about presidential candidate Ralph Nader, who really is Arab (his family is Lebanese Catholic, which is ethnically Arab). The real reason we are seeing these attacks re-surface is because the McCain camp and McCain supporters are out of juice. They have nothing to cling to but hate and scapgoating.