BHO
The glee with which conservative bloggers roll out Obama’s full given name, the shrill epithetical Barack Hussein Obama, is a hollow pander of the n-th degree, a rhetorical device for hacks taking a shortcut to the mediocrity of the Fifth Circle.
It’s also hysterically ahistorical, a carnival mirror where instead of biography equating to destiny in Presidential politics, genealogy becomes shorthand for personal worth, meritocracy be damned. Having a good Anglo name is now a calling-card for godliness.
If politics is bloodsport and name calling is de rigeur to play, is it too much to ask for some creativity instead of a shallow stand-in for racial phobia? “Limousine liberal” at least had a nice alliterative ring to it.