FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - Three Interesting Untruths

Rant Number 461 20 October 2011

A feeble joke the Tea Party (actually, it comes from Popbitch) might have invented: ‘A Communist, a Muslim and an illegal immigrant walk into a bar in Washington D.C. The bartender looks at them and says, “What can I get you, Mr President?”’

Sigh...Low, unworthy stuff. Trading for its effect on a spurious plausibility. Not devoid of interest, though. For three reasons.

Take Barack Obama, the Muslim. His second name is Hussein. Aha! The smoking gun? But, imagine the priest’s second name was Ahmad (maybe it is...): would that make him into Muslim? Nah! Nor does the religion of the President’s father make him so. Not even that the boy Obama went to school in Indonesia. Barack Hussein is an avowed, baptised, professing Christian and that’s that.

Yes, in a famous 2009 Cairo speech, Obama began by assalamualaiking his audience. Then he referred or quoted the Qur’an four times. He swore that America and Islam ‘are not exclusive’ – indeed that Islam ‘is part of America’ - that his country was not ‘and never will be’ at war with Islam, upheld Muslim women’s right to wear the hijab – even to punish those who sought to prevent them from doing it - (a dig at France’s mini-Sarkozy...), gave hope to Palestinians, declared himself against Israeli settlements, hinted at the Gaza siege, and so fulsomely on.

Wallahi! Verily, it was like a manifestation of Imam al-Mahdi. At least many Muslims felt that way. But clear-eyed folks like the priest never bought that pie in the sky, New Jerusalem scenario. In a speech to a meeting in the House of Lords chaired by a real Muslim, Lord Ahmed, I ruthlessly punctured the starry-eyed ‘Obama the Saviour’ myth. I compared Barack not the Mahdi – that would have been disrespectful - but to Samuel Becket’s Godot. An elusive, eagerly-awaited pseudo-Messiah. The two wretched protagonists long for Godot’s coming. When the Saviour does, all their problems will be solved. Enigmatic impostors, messengers, hints reach them on stage but not Godot. The play ends with the forlorn characters still waiting, in bleak, hopeless hope. Moral: people who expect Obama-Godot to solve the Middle East conundrum are deluded. Fellow speakers Kamal el-Helbawi and Anas al-Tikriti disagreed with me. I wonder what they think now.

Actually, Obama badly misjudged Muslims. They are not that dumb. You can quote the Qur’an in every sentence (‘why doesn’t he become a Muslim then?’ some Muslims may well wonder, and they would be right...), it will not displease them but they will then expect you to deliver a bit more than that. Godot’s priceless asset of course is that he never arrives so he does not have to do a bean. But that smart way-out President Obama cannot take. He is definitely here. What has he done for Muslims?

Nothing. This Islam-loving President has not closed Guantanamo, keeps troops fighting in Afghanistan, had his marines kill Osama Bin Laden in cold blood, has ignominiously cow-towed to Netanyahu over the settlements, and now sabre-rattles towards another Islamic country, Iran. Could a third attack on a Muslim nation be in the offing?

To be fair, Obama-Godot has a home problem. It is called the pro-Israel lobby. No Us President is master of his own house on that score. Some have long considered the state of Israel an American outpost in the Arab world. Cynics may rather opine that it is America that is Israel’s outpost in the Northern hemisphere. Why that should be so is a bit of mystery. Anti-Semites rave about occult powers and bogus protocols but the priest, a friend and admirer of the Jews, a God-bearing race, will not be part of cette galere. Be that as it may, the President’s hands are tied over Palestine. Godot might rescue the poor Palestinians when and if he comes – Obama cannot and he never will.

Second, Obama the illegal immigrant. A variation on the previous theme. A canard insinuating that Barack was born outside the US and hence ineligible for the Presidency. Consider, pray: given the amount of hostility Obama generates amongst Americans, if there was any real substance to the charge, would it not have been produced, double-quick? But none ever has and that settles that one.
Third, Obama the Communist. No so surreal a claim across the pond. As my friend Leo reiterated to me, Americans are individualists. The vast geography of that nation may have something to do with it. I myself would take a Weberian line and invoke the Protestant work ethic. ‘Lift yourself up by your bootstraps, work hard, be self-reliant, God helps those who help themselves’ kind of mindset. Socialism has never thrived in the US. Just as well the Russian revolution started in time to prevent Lenin from migrating to America or he would have ended his life in obscurity in a New York slum. Anyway, many Americans resent the intrusion of the federal government into state rights and other individual affairs. Liberty matters more than anything else to them. I sympathise.

However, blow me, the priest will stick up for Obama here. That he strove to give many, poorer Americans a decent healthcare plan strikes me as meritorious. To accuse him of Communism because he tried to help the poor is wrong and loopy. You might as well, mutatis mutandis, call Jesus Christ a Communist. (My dad thought JC was a socialist but then my beloved dad, bless his soul, was no philosopher). And I cannot quite see the President leading the workers to storm Wall Street, like Lenin had the Red Guards storm the Winter Palace.

Barack, poor Barack! Not a brilliant show, on the whole, eh? Will you get a second term? Probably, because your Republican opponents are such a divided bunch. A cynic might say in the end the two parties are like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, two pretty identical characters, so does it matter which one has his man in the White House? Yes, I say, but not very much.

Honestly, my best bet is on Godot.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli