What’s driving you crazy?

Tension increases as we approach the Texas, Ohio, et alli, primaries. Now, just a day or so after she called out Barack Obama and put the mark of Rove on his campaign mailers, Hillary Clinton . . . imploded . . . maybe.

Clinton and Obama have been trading “dirty tricks” charges in increasing earnest. This time, it’s a bit of a whopper.

Someone got hold of a photo that been’s drifting around right-wing websites for some time. Someone chased it down to GEESKA Africa Magazine. Someone noted it is an Associated Press photo. Everyone noted it shows Obama in a (GASP!) turban. It is a photo taken as he was being decked out in tribal elder robes during an official trip to Africa.

Of course, that has nothing to do with why the photo is so popular with Obama’s opponents. There, in living color, is Barack HUSSEIN Obama with one of them thar Muzelum hats on. You know, a turbine! It proves that B. HUSSEIN O. is another one of them thar radical Muzelums (who, in his own cunning way, practices Christianity) out to make us kowtow to Isalum. Don’t it? Surely!

No. it doesn’t. I am serious, and (all together now!) don’t call me Shirley*.

The liberal bastion of reporting, the Drudge Report, said the picture was being passed around in emails from Clinton staffers. Other news agencies apparently didn’t get similiar emails but dutifully reported that the Drudge Report reported that the Clinton camp re …wait where am I?

Obama’s people were “shocked”. Clinton’s people were in denial, adding they didn’t see what big deal was as Clinton has worn funny . . . uh . . . native . . . dress many times on official foreign trips.

The right-wing drug offender and his felonious and grabass pals on the radio were in stitches.

This picture has been knocking around for some time, especially on right-wing hate websites who are all giggly about what it “proves” about Obama, especially since it appeared in one of their most trusted publications, National Examiner.

No matter who was spreading it around, it is a favor for Obama. This is kid’s stuff compared to what is being planned in the war room of the BS Swiftboat. It won’t matter how many times Obama says he is a Christian, it will be spread that he is an avowed, devoted, practicing, radical Muslim, bent on finishing the job that was started when bin Laden found Boy George Bush asleep at the switch on 11 September 2001 (okay, they’ll probably leave out the bit about “asleep at the switch” - shame, it’s true).

Anyway, it’s good practice for Obama, whose team did a pretty credible job of going on the offensive. Clinton’s camp was pretty quick with the denials, but should have left it at that. Obama supporters are indignant. Hillary supporters are confused, with some proposed scenarios that have Team Obama leaking it as though it was a Clinton staffer so Obama could jump on the issue and debunk it again and make Clinton look bad and Obama look good…see?

By the end of the day, both sides were back to denouncing each other’s stands and accusing the other of dirty, Rovian mistatements.

By the way, I haven’t posted the photo on the WDYC blog because I can’t afford to pay for it and I am not a member of Associated Press. I try to stick to posting stuff to which I have rights.

Finally, I leave you with three observations.

1. Only one source says it came from the Clinton Camp, which seems strange to me.

2. Unfortuantely, a black man with a different-sounding name will naturally be the target of the small minded hate mongers who, somehow, have managed to have far too great a voice in our public debate, and it is they, not he, who need to be stopped.

3. Barack Obama looks a damn sight better in the robes and turban than Boy George Bush did with that stupid sword.

*This post has a follow-up click here.