Liar: Right-wing talker Cunningham intellectually dishonest about use of Obama middle name

Bill Cunningham recently invoked the middle name of Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama in a pep talk given to a crowd attending a John McCain rally recently.

Not just once, of course. The scarcely-relevant talk show how blirted out "Hussein" at least three times in his tirade about Obama. The use of the term was perhaps the only memorable part of his stark-raving mad presentation, chock-full of innuendoes.

He then went on television Tuesday to defend his juvenile vitriol.

He was just using it as he would the middle name of any President--you know, Ronald Wilson Reagan, William Jefferson Clinton, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, etc.

Cunningham, of course, is lying.

Anyone with half a brain knows exactly what he is doing. He is sending out a signal to ignorant voters who might be turned off by Obama's Middle-Eastern middle name. He is playing to a false rumor that was circulated on the internet about Obama being a Muslim.

Eric Zorn wrote about Cunningham's tirade this way in the Chicago Tribune:

Obama doesn't use his middle name in his public life, and it's not necessary for anyone else to use it to distinguish him from other Barack Obamas.

The only reason to say "Barack Hussein Obama," as radio talk show host Bill Cunningham did repeatedly Tuesday in warming up a John McCain campaign rally in Cincinnati, is to try to excite anti-Muslim, anti-Arab prejudices (though Obama is neither Muslim nor of Arab descent) and not so subtly suggest that Obama's actually a slippery foreigner.

One cannot expect intellectual honesty from a non-intellecutal partisan like Cunningham. That being said, dredging up deep-seated xenophobia in the electorate is totally below board.

McCain repudiated Cunningham's use of the name, which spurred the half-wit talker to throw his support behind Hillary Clinton for president.

Yeah, you know: Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton.

You be the Judge: Cunningham in his own words...