Obama a Muslim? More stuff for Bullfinch's Mythology

THE FANCIFUL debate over whether President Obama is indeed a Muslim is the latest right-wing rage that should be confined to the pages of Bullfinch's Mythology. It is the product of a mythological advanced society in which semi-literate (at best!) political opponents and their disciples refuse to accept fact over fiction.

The latest evidence of the effects of the political wallowers are in the new Pew Research study that shows public opinion relating Obama to Muslim beliefs has risen from 11 pct. in March 2009 to 18 pct. in August 2010. But Pew also found that those who said they don't know whether Obama is a Muslim has increased during the same period from 34 pct. to to 43 pct. So when Rush Limbaugh refers to the president as an Imam, he and his kindergarten class know that it's working to damage Obama.

You can add Tom Ganley, the Republican congressional candidate in the Ohio's 13th District, to the "don't know" column, which leaves open the possibility that Obama might very well be you-know-what. When asked by CQ Roll Call, Ganley dodged the question by saying he doesn't "have a position on whether he's a Muslim." (Read: Obama might be - just enough to keep the voters guessing without disturbing the Far Right.)

Thomas Jefferson was a lucky man. There were no well-paid network and cable "news" staffs to advance the issue of whether he was a Deist (he was) nor ask him why he spent so much of his time rewriting the Bible. Wow! Can you possibly imagine how that would go over with the Big Media today?

Pew Research: For some, the evil eye exists

PEW RESEARCH is reporting that 16 pct. of Americans believe wholeheartedly in the "evil eye." If the relatives on my mother's side were still breathing, the number would have increased dramatically. Not a day passed that someone wasn't ducking behind a sofa to avoid the sinister stare of a cousin or a stranger. To keep whatever peace was available on any given day, we all gritted our teeth and went along with it until the crises passed.

My loving mother lived courageously with the threats of evil eyes, warning all within her reach of the perils of ignoring them. They were part of a larger assembly of superstitions that guided all of our lives since birth. For example, she warned us never to step outside within three hours of washing our hair - a rigid rule in our house that, if broken, could lead to pneumonia or painful death. She never said why that was so.

We were always under strict orders never to sleep on our left side. It had something to do with the pressure on the heart, as she explained it. Besides, wasn't there a rumor that an elderly fellow up the street had succumbed to a heart attack in the middle of the night and was found to be sleeping on his left side?

I must tell you, too, of my near encounter with death as a 12-year-old as I burned up with fever from pneumonia. Ignoring medical science, Mom slid a large butcher's knife under my pillow and sat at bedside throughout the night until I came to my senses at dawn. With that, she withdrew the knife, kissed it and concluded that it had cut the fever!

My Aunt Lulu played the superstition route daily with stacks of "dream books" that would associate a three-digit number to whatever dream you had in your deepest slumber. A few pennies on the dream image in the book and you would greatly improve your chances of winning a few more cents. Of course, there were 999 possibilities of 3-digit numbers so your chances with this gambling exercise were rather slim. May Aunt Lulu rest (peacefully) in Vegas!

Like countless others, my mother took steps to ward off the evil eye with a tiny gold pendant that she strung around my neck. It was shaped like a an animal horn and called a corno by an Italian family that gave it to her. With a corno, you could be reasonably safe from the dark spirits that threaten us every day. Back when I was being tutored in the Italian language, my teacher was annoyed to get a phone call from his wife that she had been afflicted by an evil eye from a stranger at the next table in the restaurant. She rushed home and went to work ridding herself of the certain misfortune (What? Nobody ever says!) with a batch of tea leaves placed above her head. At least that's how my tutor later explained it with wry disbelief.

History tells us that even Plato referenced evil eyes and may have believed in them himself. Are any of us smart enough to play in Plato's league? I think not. Fair warning to 84 pct. of Americans who reject the notion of the evil eye.