Oh, For Crying Out Loud.

It isn't that there's anything wrong with someone having the middle name "Hussein." It's just that it happens to be the same last name of a freakin' dictator that we just freakin' displaced from power, and who was executed by his own people.

It's not racist exactly, though there are certainly Islamic parts of Africa, and there's a relationship in this country between black people and Islam that makes some people jittery—and did long before 9/11. (Many of these people are Jewish, and some of them in turn have fears about how black people feel, as a group, toward Jews. Fortunately, they are mistaken: no one feels anything as a group any more. Thank goodness.)

Normally, I'm very anti-taboo. Make that anti-fuckin' taboo, Nigga. But I truly have been suspicious about some of those who throw the name "Hussein" out there as if it were not a loaded name, and then look at one rather innocently and announce that, hey—it is his real name, so how could they possibly have darker motives for uttering it? (Or writing it?)

Well, some of them could, and some of them do.

Though I do like (most of) Nathan Thornburgh's analysis in Time:

The real problem is that if the right wants to start a whispering campaign about the name Hussein, Obama is only helping them. By cutting short the discussion, Obama is banishing his name to the voters' subconscious, where the dark opposites of hope — bigotry and fear — can turn the word over and over again in their minds until November.

The same day that Cunningham was dropping H-bombs on Cincinnati, Obama was at the Democratic debate in Cleveland, hastily accepting Hillary Clinton's assertion that she didn't order the leak of a picture of Obama wearing a turban in Kenya. "I think that's something we can set aside," he said.

It was a missed opportunity. He could have explained that he has nothing to hide. Explained why there's nothing wrong with him dressing in ceremonial clothes on official visits — like batik Bill in Indonesia in 1994 or headscarf Hillary in Eritrea in 1997. Maybe even explained why his middle name is Hussein — what his heritage means, and what it doesn't mean. In short, to reintroduce himself to those general election voters who are just starting to pay closer attention.

No matter what his advisers say, Obama wins nothing by shying away from his differences.

If I were Obama, I'd start saying the full name myself: Barack Hussein Obama, Barack Hussein Obama. But because I do know that there are some bigots out there who use the middle name to score free points while maintaining plausible deniability, I'll pass on doing so myself, and I'd encourage other center-right writers to analyze what, exactly, they are trying to accomplish when they use Obama's full name.

Byron York at NRO's The Corner has it exactly right:

Now, it is one thing to report Obama's full name — that's completely fair. In addition, it seems illustrative of the Obama phenomenon that so many Democrats have gotten so excited about him and don't even know his name. On the other hand, it's another thing to regularly refer to him by his full name when you would not otherwise do so — that is, were it not "Hussein."

Hopefully that won't catch on.

After all, who among us chooses our middle names?

—Joy Mary May W. McCann,
younger sister to Tiger Allyn [Whitebread], and
overprotective/well-armed older sister to the lovely A. Sedika [+ Whitebread maiden name + Irish married name]; they sometimes come across the bleached bones of people who've called young A. a "towel head," but you're encouraged to try . . . after all, I need the target practice.