And one thing that I do know is his having grown up in Kenya, his view of the Brits, for example, very different than the average American.... But then if you think about it, his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather, their view of the Mau Mau Revolution in Kenya is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather.The obvious problem with this comment is that Obama did not grow up in Kenya. He grew up in America and spent 5 years of his youth in Indonesia. Huckabee tried to correct his (mis)statement when he said he meant to say Indonesia instead of Kenya. Well, that doesn't make much sense either because Indonesia was a Dutch colony and the Mau Mau Revolution happened in Kenya.
While Mike Huckabee certainly has a Constitutional right to make comments about the public discourse of our country and our President that equate to nothing more than bologna, the public market place for ideas most certainly should let this rant by Huckabee sink to the bottom along with Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and other "birther" comments. My hope is our society will place an appropriate "limit" on speech like this by rejecting this misinformation and by not making Mr. Huckabee a viable candidate for President.
Here is the Fact Check on Huckabee's comments:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2011/03/huckabees_kenya_clarification.html
Scott I think I would agree with the need for there to be a limit on what people say about political figures. To a non-political junky such as myself, I might take what this guy says with a grain of salt but that does not mean I would not think that the president is from Kenya. That leads to me telling other people this “fact” and either making other people believe a misstatement or someone looking at me as though I am ridiculous. What if I was totally against Kenya in everything they did and because of this misstatement made by Mike Huckabee, I chose to vote against Obama in the next election on that “fact” alone. I do realize that it is my responsibility to check the validity of the statements made by people but when a person of authority is speaking it is more likely that people will just accept what they say and not challenge it.
ReplyDeleteI don't agree completely with a speech limit on political figures. I would agree more with people keeping themselves more informed about political canidates. However that doesn't leave Huckabee off the hook either. I have to beleive that he knew most of his base and possible voters beleive that Obama was not born in the US and if he keeps using Kenya, people will let their own false information take over and not look into the information for themselves.
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