Obama, as the conspiracy theorists see him, taken from an anti-Obama Website
I was pretty surprised when I got an e-mail this morning from a friend who’s a sophisticated figure in the local music scene. The e-mail amounts to a long conspiracy theory meant to suggest that Obama has questionable Muslim connections who may have funded his college tuition and other endeavors. Then I got the same e-mail today from a Fort Lewis-based sergeant I know serving in Iraq. It begins like this:
“Around 1979 Obama started college at Occidental in California. He is very open about his two years at Occidental, he tried all kinds of drugs and was wasting his time but, even though he had a brilliant mind, did not apply himself to his studies. ‘Barry’ (that was the name he used all his life) during this time had two roommates, Muhammad Hasan Chandoo and Wahid Hamid, both from Pakistan. During the summer of 1981, after his second year in college, he made a ‘round the world’ trip. Stopping to see his mother in Indonesia, next Hyderabad in India, three weeks in Karachi, Pakistan where he stayed with his roommate's family, then off to Africa to visit his father’s family. My question — Where did he get the money for this trip?”
I had a hard time believing this paranoid rant came from the people I know and so I e-mailed them both to ask if they had sent it. I’m still waiting to hear from the sergeant but my friend in the music biz said absolutely not. Apparently it’s a virus (you can also find it on an array of Websites, including this one debunking it) and, in the last weeks of the election, it’s raiding the computers of some pretty different types of people.
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