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Sometimes I feel unsmart

Today’s quote (and inspiration for the below video)

“Black notes, white notes, and you need to play the two to make harmony folks!”
Spike Milligan

Sometimes I feel like I lack intelligence. Or maybe I’m not politically savvy. Sometimes I look at think and say to myself, “Self, I just don’t get it.”

I know that some of my readers are intelligent and/or politically savvy, so I’m asking you, dear readers, to help me make sense of the following. These are (short) excerpts from this article in the Chicago Tribune. I kept what I kept to keep the tone of the article, and to emphasize a couple of points. Note the things that are in bold and italic.

To many white voters, race still matters
Rural Kentucky points up a difficult reality for Barack Obama

By Rex W. Huppke

Tribune correspondent

May 20, 2008

MUNFORDVILLE, Ky. — Mike Rife is white, a semiretired factory worker with a high school education and a 2-foot-square sign on his lawn that makes friends and neighbors flip him the finger as they drive by.

The sign reads: “Obama for President.”

“They won’t vote for a black man,” Rife said of the people he has lived around all his 57 years. “That’s all there is to it. They just can’t bring themselves to do it.”
The Munfordvilles of America — and there are many—present a troubling reality for Obama’s campaign, as his lopsided loss in neighboring West Virginia showed. These are the places where lofty talk of transcending race is dragged to earth by a weighty reality that has nothing to do with Obama’s position on the federal gas tax, Clinton’s tenacity on the campaign trail or even the off-putting rants of Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.
Anyone thinking a black politician could come onto the national stage and simply win these Kentuckians over is being naive, residents say. And it’s not, as some outsiders might believe, because the town’s voters are ignorant.

That divide has provided fertile ground for Obama conspiracy theories. Residents opposed to Obama seem inclined to latch onto false rumors about the candidate or negative exaggerations about his views.

“I believe that he’s a Muslim,” said Susan Horton, 56 and white. She leaves her living room whenever Obama comes on the television. “I think that if he gets into office, there’s going to be another bombing.”

“He’s not patriotic,” said Brandy Trulock, a 21-year-old mother of two. “If you can’t salute the American flag, I don’t think you should be allowed to run for president.”

He’s all Democrat, all Clinton and, if Obama wins the nomination, all for Republican John McCain. He doesn’t trust Obama, has serious questions about the Muslim rumors and truly believes a black man will not survive long as president of the United States.

Copyright © 2008, Chicago Tribune

The article states that the towns voter’s are not ignorant.

The article goes on to mention Rev. Wright, and mention there are people in the town that believe that Barack Obama is Muslim.

Sorry — but you can’t say that people are not ignorant, and then state that these non ignorant people believe that Obama is Muslim.  Trinty UCC is a *CHRISTIAN* church — not a Muslim church.

So please, my intelligent, politically savvy friends, tell me how anyone who catches a sound bite doesn’t know that Obama is Christian.