King’s Bigotry and Obama and the Muslims (Again)

(Via Informed Comment.)

Congressman Steven King of Iowa, who has decided to further disgrace Congress by seeking a fifth term there, delivered himself of the sort of bigotted and ignorant comments about Barack Obama that we have come to expect from the rightwing Republicans who have made such a mess of our economy and of the world.

King is the man who dismissed torture at Abu Ghraib as mere “hazing,” and maintained that his wife was in more danger in Washington, D.C. (with all those black people, he apparently meant) than civilians were in Iraq. He also said that the 72 virgins in paradise promised to Muslim martyrs probably all looked like Helen Thomas (the distinguished octogenarian Arab-American White House reporter).

In short, King is not just a garden variety conservative. He is something close to being a white supremacist.

So King begins by saying the opposite of what he means:

‘ “I don’t want to disparage anyone because of their race, their ethnicity, their name - whatever their religion their father might have been,” he said. ‘

But of course, he does want to disparage Barack Obama on racist grounds. And he goes on to do so.

“I’ll just say this: When you think about the option of a Barack Obama potentially getting elected President of the United States — I mean, what does this look like to the rest of the world? What does it look like to the world of Islam?” ‘

I presume it would look like America is less racist than the Muslim world had thought, and therefore much less like the bigot Steve King. The left-leaning Beiruti newspaper al-Safir predicted recently that Obama will never be president, because he is being effectively smeared as “a Muslim,” and soft on terrorism and insufficiently supportive of the Israeli far right.

Back to Peasant, I mean, King:

‘ He continued: “I will tell you that, if he is elected president, then the radical Islamists, the al-Qaida, the radical Islamists and their supporters, will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11 because they will declare victory in this War on Terror.” ‘

I see. And why would al-Qaeda dance in the streets that a Christian of white Kansas and Kenyan heritage, who promised to bomb them in Pakistan, had become president?

Full post here.