Mama Obama- What's the Big Deal?

Why is everyone talking about Mama Obama? Not his wife---his mother. James Taranto points out that pro-Israel Martin Peretz, who supports Obama even though he acknowledges that is foreign policy advisers are Anti-Israel and Louis Farrakhan who loves Obama's foreign policy advisers for precisely that reason, both talk about the fact that Obama had a white Mama. Taranto thinks its a bit on the creepy side. I thought that in America it was a BAD thing to vote for someone because they have a white mama.

Personally I think its an opportunity for me to run for President. My Mom is White also.

The Peretz-Farrakhan Convergence By JAMES TARANTO

Not yet creeped out by the Barack Obama phenomenon? Maybe this will change your mind. Marty Peretz, the pro-Israel hawk who is The New Republic's titular editor-in-chief, and Louis Farrakhan, the anti-Semitic head of the Nation of Islam, are as one in their avidity for Obama. Here's a piece of Peretz's blog entry from Friday:

He actually brought tears to my eyes. "I was born to a teen-aged mother," said Barack Obama, thereby locating his origins in poverty, which is true and also relevant. He told the nation that in the Austin debate, as he had told his listeners in many appearances during the campaign. He did not say, however, "to a white teen-aged mother," unspoken and unnecessary. . . .

To give fullness to the paradigm and promise of an open society, we could not do better--at least in this contest--than to choose a brilliant and articulate, pragmatic and embracing child of a poor teen-age mother.

And here is the Associated Press, reporting on Farrakhan:

"This young man is the hope of the entire world that America will change and be made better," he said. "This young man is capturing audiences of black and brown and red and yellow. If you look at Barack Obama's audiences and look at the effect of his words, those people are being transformed."

Farrakhan compared Obama to the religion's founder, Fard Muhammad, who also had a white mother and black father.

"A black man with a white mother became a savior to us," he told the crowd of mostly followers. "A black man with a white mother could turn out to be one who can lift America from her fall."

Peretz's and Farrakhan's strange fixation on Obama's mother's race makes this all the more peculiar. This is one respect in which Obama would be anything but a pathbreaker: By our count, white women have given birth to more than three dozen U.S. presidents. We're pretty sure both Hillary Clinton and John McCain have white moms too.

Again, it's not necessarily Obama's fault that people react in such bizarre ways to him. It's just that somehow the idea of a president who provokes such unhinged support strikes us as dangerous.