The Prezdent: What Religion Might He Be?

Opinions differ, as they say these days in the media. But survey respondents aren't allowed to use that excuse, sadly. So we have to take it seriously when one in five of those asked in a recent poll thought that Barack Obama is a Muslim.

That this misconception is more common among Republicans is easy to explain: The Fox News network and its excellent work in running fifteen different political untruths of varying troothiness all at the same time. Besides, Saddam so did have secret weapons of mass destruction, and he caused the 9/11 murders, too. So there.

All polls have a certain percentage of uninformed respondents, respondents who give the weirdest answers to fairly easy questions. Thus, it's not the number of wrong answers to a simple question which makes me write on the topic but two additional issues: First, the correlation with the wrong answers with Republican party affiliation and, second, the seeming increase in these wrong answers over time.

Those who gave them offered television as their main source. If this is the case, television has some serious remedial learning to do. But I suspect the cause of all this miseducamation is something slightly different than television pundits stating with a straight face that president Obama is Muslim by religion.