hussein

John Cole goes into depth on a subject I've been a little confused about. Why is it any sort of liability that Barack Obama's middle name is Hussein? Why should he run away from it? Are all "Jeffrey"'s somehow linked to Jeffrey Dahmer?

Cole writes:

Barack Obama's middle name is in honor of his grandfather, Hussein, a secular resident of Nairobi, Kenya. Americans may think of Saddam Hussein when they hear the name, but that is like thinking of Stalin when you hear the name Joseph. There have been lots of Husseins in history, from the grandson of the prophet Mohammed, a hero who touched the historian Gibbon, to King Hussein of Jordan, one of America's most steadfast allies in the 20th century. The author of the beloved American novel "The Kite Runner" is Khaled Hosseini.

Exactly. The shallow-minded, xenophobic stupidity of all this is highly depressing.