US voters reject media hate campaign

Moving "beyond the use of the term Muslim as a pejorative" to ask "what did real Muslim-Americans think of the Chicago senator? And how did they vote?", Newseek's Lorraine Ali (11/7/08) cites a 10-state survey that found "95 percent of Muslims polled cast a ballot" and "89 percent of respondents voted for Obama." Ali sees this in part as a response to a period in which being Muslim could mean the curtailing of your civil liberties--but notes that few Muslim-Americans spoke out about their electoral choice, given that this "was an election year in which the word 'Muslim' was used as shorthand to connote anti-American leanings and a hidden love of terrorism": A recent study by Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, a media watchdog group, found that the mainstream press didn't do enough to challenge the election-year smears of Islam by such conservative talkshow hosts as Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage, or counter accusations that Obama was "one of them" by detractors such as Obama Nation author Jerome Corsi. "We are the bogeyman now," joked a secular Muslim women last month during a conversation regarding Obama (she preferred to remain anonymous). "Yes, I want to shout my endorsement of him from the rooftops, but I do not want to mess up any chance of Obama becoming the next president. How crazy is this position we've been put in?" But the ploy to connect Obama to a demonized Islam may have backfired. Weeks before the election, a non-profit group which calls itself the Clarion Fund sent out an anti-Muslim DVD titled Obsession in Sunday papers across America; copies were also mailed to various voters in swing states. The DVD paired images of Nazis with images of Muslims, over and over and over again. Its arrival on the eve of the election was clearly intended to scare voters into supporting McCain, turning them against the candidate whose middle name happens to be "Hussein." "It was intended to be a way of linking Obama to Islam, but it backfired.... "It not only mobilized many Muslim-American voters, but brought out other undecided voters in support of Obama rather than McCain." Evidence that the U.S. public is not as manipulable as haters like Clarion and their corporate media facilitators assume.