Ohio, what’s in a name?

In 1969, I was born to Republican – Independent parents who lived a middle-class, civil-service, stay-at-home-mom lifestyle in a very homogenous Republican county in northwestern Ohio.  I still live in the area with a husband imported from southern Florida.  Though college graduates, we earn under $50K a year. 

Since Barack Obama’s 2004 DNC keynote, we have been closely following his stand on issues and his vision for the United States.  I thought I was well versed in Obama and could speak convincingly to any challenger with a CREDIBLE argument until yesterday.

Yesterday, I was waiting in a dentist office for my 96 year-old grandmother to have a cavity filled.  Two ladies from a neighboring county came into the waiting room and remarked on my vest covered in Obama buttons.  They both stated that they really like what Senator Obama says, but that his name was a little too Islamic for their comfort level.

I was stymied.  Those fear-emails that have been going around on this subject are easy to ignore because they are spammed by faceless cowards, but here were two human beings in front of me who deserved the very basic offering of respect.  How could I address them whilst keeping hidden my anger that they could aloud even say such a thing? 

They were expressing fear.  Earlier in the week, I wrote about acknowledging that fear is a motivating factor that Obama supporters should treat with compassion: http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/voteonpaper/gGgMtX .  The question was, would I be able to practice what I had been preaching? 

The first card punched with rectangular dots that my brain pitched out was, “It doesn’t matter if the candidate is red, white, or blue, striped, tooty-fruity, man, woman, gay, straight, one eye-browed, left-handed, ambidextrous, right-pant-leg-first, floss-before-brushing, atheist, agnostic, Mennonite, Mormon, Muslim, or Methodist, we need to hire the best person for the job.”  However, this was not the audience for that argument.

The next card suggested that I, “Point out that Mr. and Mrs. Obama are practicing members of the United Church of Christ. “  This tactic goes against what I believe, because it should not matter.  It may calm the fears of my audience, but doesn’t help Muslims live more safely or more freely.

The third card asked me, “What evils have been perpetrated in the name of religion?”  While true and Christians would be on the losing end of that debate, my audience might recoil at my dissing Onward Christian Soldiers.

When I relayed the situation to my husband, his first reaction was, “What’s in a name?  Take John.  Why should we elect someone whose name is John?  A ‘john’ is a toilet.  I don’t want a toilet for a president.  We’ve already had a “John” as President.  He was assassinated.   You know what a ‘john’ is, don’t you?  A ‘john’ is a customer of a prostitute.  Do you really want to get up everyday in the United States with THAT hanging over your head?”  I appreciated his argument because it points out the absurdity of the entire matter.

I continued to ponder the “fear-of-a-name” problem.  Senator Obama didn’t choose his name, his parents did.  In the early sixties when Barack Obama was born, Americans weren’t concerning themselves with Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden but with Communists and war with the Soviet Union.  If the young parents had named their son after a communist leader, one could make an argument about how they were going to raise their child.  According to a web search, the top three most popular boy names in 1961 were Michael, David, and John.  If Barack had been named “John Dunham Obama”, it wouldn’t have changed where he spent his childhood or who had a hand in his upbringing. 

This morning, after being reassured that Senator Obama’s wins have been by double-digit leads in the last ten contests, my mind wandered back to the two ladies in the dentist’s office.  Perhaps my trouble was I not only wanted to diffuse their fears, I wanted to win them over so they would vote for Barack Obama on March 4^th, if not earlier.  I found my brain resorting to fear trumping fear.  “Well,” I sighed , “what concerns me more than the origin of someone’s name is the practice of politicians selling off our interstates and toll roads to foreign companies.  Governor Mitch Daniels, the Republican Governor of Indiana and Governor Ed Rendell, the Democratic Governor of Pennsylvania, states which border Ohio on the west and east, have already or intend to sell off toll roads to the highest private bidder.  Foreign countries are hi-jacking our roads.  They can raise the toll at anytime.  There are non-competition clauses that prevent states from building or expanding near-by roads.  These roads were built by U.S. taxpayers.  We should control our roads, not private interests in Spain and Australia!  This is not the interstate highway system that Eisenhower envisioned!  (I’m on the soapbox now.  I’m using key words and phrases that speak to the concerns of the American people, and I threw in the name of a former U.S. President for good measure.  However, I haven’t addressed their fear, and I’ve compounded the problem with another fear.)

I need to change my aim.  Instead of trying to convert everyone I meet, I should simply and plainly address and calm their fear and counter with a different, positive image for my audience to focus on.  The positive seed is the one I want to be responsible for planting.  Nurtured by other Obama supporters they may encounter and by the actions and deeds of the candidate himself, the image will grow.  I believe that the seeds of truth and hope are making the difference as voters are deciding who will be inaugurated President of the United States of America on January 20^th, 2009.