When the Mark Foley pedophile scandal hit Republicans last October, Fox News came up with a deeply cynical method of damage control – it labeled Foley as a Democrat on its various news shows. On January 1st, CNN made a similar mistake of a dubious nature -- one that foreshadows the demonization of the Democratic Party’s rising star and a likely presidential candidate in 2008.

In a segment describing the ongoing failure to capture Osama bin Laden, CNN featured a graphic of the al-Qaeda terrorist leader along with the headline – “Where’s Obama?” Liberal blogs like Daily Kos immediately pounced on this glaring typo, and CNN’s Wolf Blitzer publicly apologized the next day. But the damage was done. Then on January 3rd, Yahoo News featured a headline "Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida," along with a headshot of Barack Obama. If the right wing has its way, we’ll be seeing more “mistakes” like this.

I’ve become more convinced in the past few weeks that Senator Barack Obama is the best hope for Democrats to take back the White House in 2008. John Edwards could have had his moment in 2004, but he’s never delivered on his potential after having been given every opportunity to shine. More and more Democrats are waking up to the realization that if they choose Hillary Clinton, they have a death wish. The remaining candidates simply don’t have the stature to deny Clinton the nomination – leaving Obama as the most viable option available. He could become the first black president, is young and articulate, and unlike so many other Democrats can truly say that he was always against the Iraq War. Which is precisely why Republicans are afraid of him.

Already, right-wing pundits are trying to undercut Obama’s credibility by linking his Kenyan name (he was named after his father) to the names of Islamic terrorists and dictators. On the November 28th edition of “Hardball,” Republican strategist Ed Rogers casually referred to him as “Barack Hussein Obama,” which was probably the first time that anyone had ever used his full name on television.

The strategy of bringing up Obama’s middle name serves a dual purpose – it feeds into the post-9/11 hysteria that has increased the number of anti-Arab hate crimes in this country. But it also hurts Obama’s support among liberals, because it makes them nervous about whether he can “win.” Liberals notoriously get cold feet when they’re afraid that their dream candidate won’t be palatable to “middle America” (look at what happened to Howard Dean in 2004), and if you inject enough doubt in their minds they will inevitably drift to a “safe” candidate like John Kerry. I didn’t know that Obama’s middle name was Hussein until Rogers brought it up – and it even made me question his viability as a presidential candidate.

Of course, Hussein is a very common name in the Muslim world – so to bring up his full name is clearly a racist move to link him with the deceased Iraqi dictator. But the media won’t even stop at tarnishing Obama over his middle name. On December 11th, CNN’s Jeff Greenfield commented on Obama’s casual “jacket-and-no-tie” attire that he wore on a campaign visit to New Hampshire, and compared it with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“It is one thing,” said Greenfield, “to have a last name that sounds like Osama and a middle name, Hussein, that is probably less than helpful. But an outfit that reminds people of a charter member of the axis of evil, why, this could leave his presidential hopes hanging by a thread.” After an outcry, Greenfield explained that it was a joke, but would he have made the same comparison about a white politician with an Anglo name who happens to dress in “business casual?” And the clothes comparison with Ahmandinejad is tenuous at best – Greenfield even admitted on the show that it’s par for the course for presidential candidates to dress down when they test the waters.

In 2003, when Barack Obama was a little-known state senator running for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate, Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky went to a White House reception sporting an “Obama” campaign button. President Bush noticed the button, and freaked out for a second because he thought that it said “Osama.” When Schakowsky explained what it was all about, the President shrugged and said he had never heard of Obama. “Trust me,” said Schakowsky, “you will.”

After six years, we’ve come to expect inane stupidity like this from our current Chief Executive. But I’d like to hold our media – especially the Beltway punditocracy – to a higher standard of professionalism. Treat Barack Obama like you would any white politician, and don’t make inappropriate aspersions that feed into our worst racist tendencies. And please … no more unfortunate “mistakes” like the CNN caption.

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