Al Qaeda's old No. 2 greets America's new No. 1 as a 'house Negro' (or worse)
Hi, how are you? Good to see you too.
Osama bin Laden's chief of staff Ayman Zawahiri sent President-elect Barack Obama a recorded welcome message or perhaps a Thanksgiving greeting Wednesday (see video below). He called the newly elected leader a "house Negro" or "house slave," depending on whose translation you prefer being insulted by.
The videotaped message, delivered without preconditions on militant Arabic websites and immediately gobbled up by global media, lumped the new president in with Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice as blacks who do the bidding of whites, "the direct opposite of honorable black Americans" such as Malcolm X.
The tape showed Obama wearing a yarmulke and palling around with Jewish leaders on his visit to Israel last summer.
Zawahiri also warned the president-to-be that his plan to send more American troops into Afghanistan is doomed.
In a news release from Washington Wednesday that garnered much less attention, the executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, Salam Marayati, called the Al Qaeda leader's comments "despicable and racist" and added: "To Al Qaeda, we say clearly: Stop using our name as Muslims and our religion to spread your suicidal, hateful and un-Islamic propaganda. We condemn you, your terrorist actions and everything that you stand for."
See news video below.
-- Andrew Malcolm
Get automatic cellphone alerts of each new Ticket item by registering here for free.
Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the 
Subscribe to this Blog
Whoa, and I thought they were going to be working together to bring America down. That's a relief.
Posted by: scottm | November 19, 2008 at 07:23 PM
Sounds like this guy was educated in American schools. Talking about house negros and field negros, what the ..?
Posted by: Roger | November 20, 2008 at 03:30 AM