He's Hussein, She's Hussein, and I'm Hussein Too

The NY Times had an article on the spreading phenomenon of people adopting Hussein as their middle name. The practice began with a call to action entitled "We Are All Hussein" from blogger Jeff Strabone in February, who was fed up with the right wing noise machine's puerile repetition of Barack Hussein Obama's middle name, with the insinuations that he is some crypto-Muslim and not a true American. In rejection of this baseless and offensive innuendo campaign, Strabone changed his own middle name to Hussein for the duration of the campaign, and encouraged others to do the same. Now it seems that Jeff Hussein Strabone is being joined in husseinhood by fair-minded Americans of many ethnicities, such as Jaime Hussein Alvarez, Sarah Beth Hussein Frumkin, and Ashley Hussein Holmes. This spontaneous solidarity is a wonderful response. Commenters called to mind the scene in the 1960 film Spartacus, where a bunch of slaves all claimed "I am Spartacus" to protect their friend, or the film "In and Out", where an outed teachers students and supporters all claimed to be gay too. The NY Times mentioned an incident in Billings, Montana where many citizens put menorahs in their windows to protest a spate of ugly anti-Jewish incidents. Me, I thought of the story of the King of Denmark being the first to put on a yellow star when the Nazis came for the Jews (which I just now learned is a legend). In any case, count me in. I'll be Tom Hussein Chatt. (Or Thomas Rodrick Hussein Chatt in full. I'm not going to diss my Dad.)

And, and by the way, if anyone wants to know what a real American patriot looks like, they should check out this video of Barack Hussein Obama's speech given in Independence, Missouri, a few days ago in anticipation of Independence Day.

Barack Obama: Speech on Patriotism.
June 30, 2008. Independence, MO. (Full text here.)