I Am Bloodthirsty Hussein Liberal
Sign me up: his middle name is nothing to be ashamed of. Barack Muammar Obama or Barack Yasser Obama—now, those would be problems.
But who’s afraid of the big fat Hussein? Hussein, Hussein, Hussein…
“Hu-Hu-Hussein, goodbye,
Hu-Hu-Hussein don’t cry…”
Emily Nordling has never met a Muslim, at least not to her knowledge. But this spring, Ms. Nordling, a 19-year-old student from Fort Thomas, Ky., gave herself a new middle name on Facebook.com, mimicking her boyfriend and shocking her father.
“Emily Hussein Nordling,” her entry now reads.
With her decision, she joined a growing band of supporters of Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, who are expressing solidarity with him by informally adopting his middle name.
The result is a group of unlikely-sounding Husseins: Jewish and Catholic, Hispanic and Asian and Italian-American, from Jaime Hussein Alvarez of Washington, D.C., to Kelly Hussein Crowley of Norman, Okla., to [my favorite -ed.] Sarah Beth Hussein Frumkin of Chicago.
…
“My name is such a vanilla, white-girl American name,” said Ashley Holmes of Indianapolis, who changed her name online “to show how little meaning ‘Hussein’ really has.”
Exactly.
Nous sommes tous Husseins. Except for Aggie, who has asked to be christened (oh dear, that’s a bad choice of word) Aunt Fatima Agatha.
And as little meaning as the name Hussein has is how little meaning the hijab has, or arranged marriages with nine-year-olds have, or honor killings have, or female genital mutilation has, or denying basic civil liberties to women has—or really any idea from the soft, vapid world of left-wing ideology. Which is to say, none whatsoever.
Yours in slushy, mushy solidarity,
BTHL
Chris said,
June 30, 2008 @ 9:16 pm
Vapid? Thanks for the laugh today.
Bloodthirsty Liberal said,
June 30, 2008 @ 9:17 pm
The Wall Street Journal daily briefing, Best of the Web, pointed out a name that you won’t find on the list: Hillary Diane Hussein Rodham Clinton.
al-Agatha
martino said,
July 1, 2008 @ 9:01 am
Holy Toledo. So now we have a wave of freaks whose moms used to dress exactly like Madonna in “Desperately Seeking Susan” in the proud effort to “express our individuality.”
I wonder what names these slugs would choose while they were on American flight 11.
Bloodthirsty Liberal said,
July 1, 2008 @ 9:36 am
You know what, Martino?
For the longest time I have had a sense of sadness about many of the children of the baby boom generation. I have a lot of personal experience with it and have observed that many of them did get sort of shuffled off to the side in the interest of whatever political fad was going on at the time. Also the research into child development assured parents that if the parents were happy, the happiness of the child would follow along. Basically, that is what the popular magazines and TV news shows were telling us, sort of a pop version of stuff coming out of the universities. It was only later that other research popped up questioning that, suggesting that family meal time, for example, was a good idea. That structure and routine and just showing up… all the really boring stuff matters to kids. I could go on but I sound like an old lady even to myself every time I dwell on these thoughts.
- Aggie
Chris said,
July 1, 2008 @ 10:26 am
Aggie,
So you’re a boomer? I just want to make sure so that I can arbitrarily talk down about your generation in kind.
And BTL,
Were you talking about the elements of radical Islam as well as the soft, vapid world of left-wing ideology, or were you implying those traits of radical Islam are part of the soft, vapid world of left-wing ideology?