Connie Pashall, 56, of Portland, is ignorant
Portland’s Willamette Week went door-to-door to find people who aren’t voting for Obama and to ask them why not. The article is fuzzy on why the newspaper did this, exactly — Willamette Week is often fuzzy on why it does a lot of things — but one of the answers they got caught my attention.
It’s from Connie Pashall, age 56, who says she’s an independent. Willamette Week’s summary of her position:
A supporter of President Clinton during the 1990s, Pashall admits that conservative websites have given her pause about Obama’s heritage. “If there’s anything to his Muslim background, then we’d have al-Qaeda working on our country from the top-down.”
Assuming Willamette Week quoted her correctly, this means Connie Pashall is an astonishingly ignorant woman, one of those people you know exist but rarely encounter, like a billionaire, or a hunchback.
First of all, she apparently believes that being Muslim is the same thing as being connected with al-Qaeda. Really? There really are people who actually think this? I mean, I guess I knew there were. Like I said, it’s just weird to actually come across one.
But what’s more, in Connie Pashall’s view, you don’t even have to be a faithful, practicing Muslim now — all you need is a Muslim background, and that’s enough to make you in league with the terrorists.
I hope the “conservative websites” that have given her pause are on the fringe and don’t represent normal, rational conservatives. I don’t think they do. There are plenty of valid reasons not to vote for Obama, but the belief that his possible Muslim background equals a current sympathy with al-Qaeda is not one of them. That’s an invalid reason, a dumb reason, a reason held by dumb people, a dumb reason held by dumb people such as Connie Pashall, age 56, of Portland. Who is dumb.
August 21st, 2008 at 4:05 pm
I’m concerned about McCain’s “child” background. If it’s really true that he was once a child then we could have non-adults working on this country from the top down.
August 21st, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Well, it seems to be common belief if you’re Mormon, or live in Utah, you’re probably a polygamist. And also not presidential material. =)
I never know how much truthiness there is to these Overheard In … quotes, but here’s one about Obama, in the grain of “are there people this dumb?*”: (language warning)
http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/015819.html
* Yes, there are.
August 21st, 2008 at 4:27 pm
It really astonishes me that some people out there are not just ill-informed, but willfully ignorant. This Connie person has at least put forward some effort to “research” the truth, but then fails miserably in the follow through. Seriously, how did she come to that conclusion?? Even reading some of the most die-hard Conservative websites, you just have to be born stupid to think that the author(s) are equating Barack = Muslim = Al Qaeda.
/Epic Fail.
August 21st, 2008 at 5:26 pm
He’s CATHOLIC!
August 21st, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Wish I lived on the West Coast, and people who believed stupid lies about Obama were as rare as hunchbacks.
Alas, I live in the less-enlightened areas of the US (the whole middle section) and stupid people are abundant. It doesn’t help that many of them breed like rabbits.
August 21st, 2008 at 7:05 pm
Those websites are on the fringe; many notable conservative websites, such as instapundit.com and hotair.com, have taken pains to point out that there’s plenty of legitimate room for disagreement on Obama without resorting to nutty conspiracy theories– that Obama’s a closet Muslim, isn’t eligible for the Presidency, etc.
If it’s any consolation, the far-left has the same kind of irritating conspiracy theories– that McCain is not eligible for the presidency (he was born in the Panama Canal Zone), that he’s a closet communist and sold out his country during his POW experience (for some, this is a feature, not a bug), so forth.
August 21st, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Note that the part about conservative websites isn’t a quote… do these conservative websites even exist? Do more than a dozen people visit said website any given day? Did the article’s author assume that’s where she heard it from? Sounds kind of suspicious…
One thing’s for sure: I frequent several conservative websites, and the animated gifs on them are smarter than Connie Pashall.
August 21st, 2008 at 8:44 pm
Reminds me of the Dubai port deal thing. Everyone who said anything about said “We can’t let Al Qaida control our ports.” The idea that only conservatives believe Muslim=Al Qaeda is patently false.
August 21st, 2008 at 9:43 pm
I assure you that some people are this dumb (I’ve met a few of them), but thankfully not people who possess even a modicum of education. They’re more motivated by hate and paranoid bigotry than actual ignorance. Many equally-ignorant people at least have the foresight to reserve judgment until they’ve actually heard something.
August 21st, 2008 at 10:33 pm
Obama IS in league with terrorists. Also, I have it on good authority that John McCain’s middle name is Lucifer.
August 22nd, 2008 at 12:18 am
I don’t know anything about Willamette Week–is it an openly leftist paper (as opposed to the normal ones that are leftist but like to pretend that they’re trying to be unbiased and objective)? If not, why didn’t they bother to keep up the appearance of objectivity by asking Obama supporters why they weren’t voting for McCain? I understand that Oregon is a predominantly blue state and this was (apparently?) an opinion piece, but trust me, if you go around asking Obama supporters why they don’t back McCain, you’ll find similar nuts to pick.
August 22nd, 2008 at 5:46 am
Why doesn’t McCain’s potential brainwashing by communists while a prisoner of war get more attention?
August 22nd, 2008 at 6:44 am
Joe – Who said he’s Catholic? He is a member of the United Church of Christ, a congregationalist sect of protestants. That was the whole scandal about his ex-minister.
Also, there are unfortunately a large number of conversatives who think that Barak Obama is muslim, and thus in league with the terrorists. It doesn’t help that Fox News keep “accidentally” calling him Osama, or calling his hand movements a “terrorist fist bump”. And you wonder where people get this stuff…
August 22nd, 2008 at 6:53 am
I second Tim and Clumpy. But “dumb” doesn’t necessarily mean that these people are unintelligent. More to the point, if an idea strikes them (from a conservative blog or out of the blue), and they want to believe it, they will — regardless of any evidence.
God will never allow the planet to run out of oil? Sounds good to me.
Obama is a terrorist? Well, his middle name is Hussein, so he’s obviously not one of us. Sounds good to me.
August 22nd, 2008 at 8:35 am
Thoughtful Observer:
Thinking Obama is a Muslim is not limited to “a large number of conservatives” — a large number of Hillary Clinton supporters thought the same thing.
Notice how Willamette Week’s reference to conservative websites is outside the quotes. Maybe the hapless Ms. Pashall, who calls herself an independent, is simply a disgruntled Clintonite.
August 22nd, 2008 at 9:41 am
Sadly, Connie probably thinks she is showing us how tolerant and open-minded she is by saying “if.” She how smart she is by not automatically believing everything she reads? She how she’s not jumping to conclusions about Obama?
August 22nd, 2008 at 10:10 am
BAC – quite true, and still depressing.
August 22nd, 2008 at 10:23 am
“Why doesn’t McCain’s potential brainwashing by communists while a prisoner of war get more attention?”
Um, because that’s crazy? Or was that your point? “How come everyone talks about crazy things people believe about Obama, but not the crazy things people believe about McCain?”
As for the part about “conservative websites” not being in quotation marks, I don’t know how everyone thinks newspapers work, but they don’t generally just make things up out of thin air. What the reporter wrote was: “Pashall admits that conservative websites have given her pause about Obama’s heritage.” The signal phrase “Pashall admits” indicates that what follows is a paraphrase or summary of what the reporter understood Pashall to say. So either Pashall mentioned some specific sites and the reporter summed them up as “conservative websites” (which means the reporter used some judgment in categorizing them, but there’s not usually much confusion over whether a political site is conservative or liberal), or Pashall herself described the sites as conservative.
That’s not to say newspapers don’t sometimes get things wrong or misquote people, but absent any reason to believe *this* reporter got it wrong in *this* instance, you should take it at face value: Pashall said that visiting conservative websites has given her pause about Obama.
August 22nd, 2008 at 10:55 am
Tim,
Your geographical snobbery seems to have clouded the fact that this woman lives in Oregon, on the coast. Isn’t that where the smart ones live in your eyes?
Wasn’t it Iowans that gave Obama his first (and surprise) win in the Caucus?
Ignorance is just as prevalent in San Fran. The issues are just different.
August 22nd, 2008 at 1:50 pm
Fair enough that newspapers don’t make things up out of thin air, but I imagine Ms. Pashall has a talent for it. Sure, Ms. Pashall said she got her misinformation from conservative websites, but that statement is neither credible (I doubt a Clinton supporter is perusing conservative websites regularly) nor reliable (because we have no idea what websites she is talking about).
But just look how the little tidbit about conservative websites leads people to decry “a large number of conversatives” who supposedly agree with Ms. Pashall (who, ironically, is not a conservative).
I guess that’s how newspapers work. If you want people to wrongfully blame conservatives for spreading rumors that Obama is a Muslim, then just quote one idiot who remembers seeing that rumor on conservative websites. One quote is all it takes to make people forget the month’s long email campaign from Clinton supporters that started the rumors in the first instance.
As for McCain’s brainwashing, I read about it on some liberal websites.
August 22nd, 2008 at 4:24 pm
“That’s not to say newspapers don’t get things wrong or misquote people…”
You’ve got to be kidding! Have been in the journalism trade in a former life, I know that Jayson Blair (the NY Times reporter fired for making up entire articles from his desk in Brooklyn) isn’t a lone wolf. Lazy, sloppy, procrastinating reporters are not exceptional, and I should know — it takes one to know one.
If you really want to know something political, you had better research it yourself from several different sources, step out from your “party” fantasies, and be careful what you get from the newspapers, television, and internet. What’s left? Use the sieve that is your brain and be street-smart and jaded. Take nothing for granted and “follow the money.” There are twelve honest politicians in the US who are true public servants, and no one knows which ones they are. It’s a fair bet none of them are running for president. (Except for — maybe — Ron Paul, whom I’m now sorry I ridiculed.)
By the way, “no one from the Clinton campaign had anything to do with the Muslim label, ” just like no one from the Clinton campaign is right now texting all the Dem super-delegates with the message that Obama’s a loser who can’t seal the deal.
Am I jaded? You bet. Walk a mile in my moccasins, kimosabe, if you can keep them from being stolen off your feet.
August 22nd, 2008 at 8:09 pm
You guys have nothin’ on this hilariously entertaining email I got from some conservative relatives, with a link to this Youtube video. Enjoy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUdjhKbImwE&NR=1
August 23rd, 2008 at 2:31 am
Dave, watching that video made me want to strangle a kitten. Thankfully it’s midnight so I won’t be able to find one until the urge subsides.
Sorry about mixing up the fields in my earlier comment – I’m not really trying to plug my website so blatantly. . .
August 23rd, 2008 at 10:03 am
I love the whole world, and all its craziness. Boom De Ah Dah.
August 23rd, 2008 at 1:36 pm
I think it’s eerily coincidental that Obama/Biden is so similar to Osama Bin Laden. If I were Obama, I’d have chosen someone else just because of that.
August 23rd, 2008 at 3:54 pm
David Manning, I see your conspiracy-theory guy and raise you a crazy pastor from Harlem:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejTmistHFw0
August 24th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
After reading some of the comments above I came to the conclusion that some of you are upset that other people might wrongly think that Obama is a muslim. I’m more upset with the idea that you think being a muslim is somehow a bad thing. Sure there are dangerous extremists in every single religion (well maybe not in buddhism) and the christians are no different, but judging a whole religion on the actions of few sounds bloody stupid to me. By the way, I thought there was such a thing as freedom of religion in your country, I guess I was misinformed. And no, I’m not a muslim myself, I just don’t see anything bad in people who are.
August 24th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
No, what you were misinformed on was the definition of the term “freedom of religion.” It does not mean, as you seem to think, that no one’s allowed to criticize your choice of religion.
You’re right that it’s silly to consider being Muslim a bad thing, given that 99.99 percent of the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims are non-extremist non-terrorists. But it’s hard enough convincing some people that Obama isn’t Muslim without also trying to convince them that even if he was, that would be OK. You gotta crawl before you can walk.
Then again, maybe it wouldn’t be OK. Muslims represent a fairly small minority in the United States — about 0.6% — and many U.S. presidents have openly used their religious beliefs to help them make decisions. For this reason, I can see how many Americans would be uncomfortable having a president whose religious beliefs were so different from their own, especially if it’s a religion that those Americans don’t know very much about. I’m not saying those concerns would be justified, but they’d be understandable.