Obama or O'Bama ? What's in a name ?

[SparkyMac]

What's in a name ? Possibly nothing. But many people think it's best to adjust one's name when they attempt to accomplish large things in a new culture.

Take the guy who controls CBS -- Sumner Redstone. Mr Redstone was born Murray Rothstein. Would he have gone so far had he not Anglicized his name ?

Which makes me wonder about our friend Barack Obama. Would anybody argue that we should all do our best to suggest things that would make the Senator more electable in November ?

Then let us discuss what he can do with his name. I've never known an American statesman with a name quite like his. I see by the news commentators that Barack is not going to do well in West Virginia. I see no reason he should not do as well as Clinton -- were it not for his name. Almost all of my relatives in Appalachia are Scots-Irish. So why not change his name to O'Bama ? It has a lovely Celtic ring to it, and with that he'd beat Clinton by 30 points. Hell, we could go so far as saying he is Black Irish. JFK did quite well in WVA in 1960. Why not emulate ?

Then in November, we would be looking at a complete sweep of the Old South.

[scheming daemons]

1. Wow.... my alarms are going off....

(freep alert! freep alert!)



This is two OPs by the user that are about Obama's name.


...and this one has an anti-semitic flavor to it as well....

[tblue]

13. Yes, we are one foot into Bizarro World with this post.

[FrenchieCat]

2. Barack Obama's name is quickly becoming a household name......

and so any connotations of it being associated with anything other than the candidate himself will be gone by November. In fact, his name is being connotated as someone popular and strong.

That's what happens in modern societies, if you needed to know.

Think about that.

[HereSince1628]

3. Is WV considered part of the Old South?

It became WV to stay with the North/Union. Did that disqualify it from both "old" and "south?"

[SparkyMac]

6. I would think so. Culturally at least.

[tblue]

12. Lots of poverty and miners. I wish they could see that voting Repug is not in their best interest.

[John Kerry VonErich]

4. Some call Barrack Barry and Jeremiah Wright Jerry.....

nt

[SparkyMac]

15. I like Barry. It has a friendly sound to it.

Barack is a little "stand offish".

[InvisibleTouch]

5. There's an advantage to a distinctive/unusual name.

It may take people longer to learn it, and even longer to learn how to spell it, but once it's learned, it stays in the mind, indelibly. The uniqueness becomes an advantage.

[Texas Hill Country]

7. "black irish" are part Spanish, not African IIRC? they are decended from the armada sailors that

washed ashore when the fleet was destroyed while trying to invade England.

[SparkyMac]

9. True -- but they were Spaniards of African descent.

[baldguy]

17. Methinks you don't know shit about Ireland

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Irish

and you know even less about Obama.

[JaneQPublic]

8. WP article on "O'bama's" Irish roots

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/12/AR2007051201551.html

[SparkyMac]

11. That's interesting. But the author makes a mistake by ..

saying that Ann Durham was Obama's mother. Her name was Ann Dunham.

[dflprincess]

10. It was the anti-Catholic bias in West Virigina that led to JFK's speech on religion

He also had FDR, Jr. campaigning for him in WV - a big help in that state.

http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/mep/displaydoc.cfm?docid=erps-wvp60

In 1958, when Kennedy had commissioned Louis Harris to poll West Virginia voters to see how he would fare running against Richard Nixon, he led his Republican opponent by fourteen points. Cheered by this hypothetical victory, he set up what journalist Theodore White called "a shadow operation" which, by 1959, had chairs in each county. Harris then polled West Virginia Democrats and reported that JFK led Humphrey seventy percent to thirty percent. Kennedy then decided that he had the votes he needed to carry the state and would not campaign actively there unless Humphrey entered the primary. Humphrey had made an early decision to compete with Kennedy for West Virginia, believing that his populist Midwestern background would appeal to voters in that state far more than JFK's polished Ivy League image. Although Humphrey had recently lost the Wisconsin primary, his prospects in West Virginia looked promising. At the same time, the Kennedy team remained confident that their candidate would trounce Humphrey, who could not even carry his next door state.

By early spring, the issue of Kennedy's religion had entered the electoral discussion, splitting the Wisconsin vote along religious lines and resulting in a steady erosion of support in West Virginia. Four weeks before West Virginia primary day, the tide had turned against JFK and he found himself trailing Humphrey by 20 points. When the campaign asked the county chairs why the voters had switched allegiance, they replied, "No one know you were a Catholic" when the poll was taken. Kennedy responded by moving his key campaign aides to West Virginia, calling on close friends to volunteer their time, and training county campaign chairs in 39 of the state's 59 counties to staff phone banks, host receptions, and go door to door to distribute literature. He changed his schedule to campaign throughout the state and brought Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr. there to endorse his candidacy. On April 25th he decided to attack the anti-Catholic bias head-on, telling audiences across the state, "I refuse to believe that I was denied the right to be President the day that I was baptized." Finally, on May 8th, two days before the election, in a broadcast paid for by the campaign, FDR, Jr. asked JFK how his Catholicism would effect his presidency. Kennedy replied that taking the oath of office required swearing on the Bible that the president would defend separation of church and state and that any candidate that violated this oath not only violated the Constitution but "sinned against God."

[Bucky]

14. Maybe he could change his name to Gary Hartpence.

[SparkyMac]

16. Good example. Would he have ever been Senator ?

That name would remind me of a pebble in my shoe.

[demmiblue]

18. I believe most Celts settled in the North

And, no, he doesn't need to do anything with his name.

You are strange.

My guess is that anyone with your thinking would not vote for him anyway.

[ecstatic]

19. Take takes away from the beauty and triumph that is Obama

A black man with a funny name born to a single mother who has turned out to be a stunning success.

If he was going to white wash himself, it would obviously have needed to be done decades ago. :eyes:

By the way, welcome to DU