10% of Americans Still Say Obama Is Muslim

There was a movie that came out a couple years ago called “Idiocracy.” The premise was that because stoopid people procreate at an alarmingly faster rate than the smart people, the United States was turned into a nation of drooling idiots over several generations. The movie was a comedy, but sometimes I think it’s already really happened, which ain’t so funny.

According to a Pew Center poll released today, one in 10 Americans still persists in thinking that presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama is a Muslim. This, despite his frequent references to his Christian beliefs and the recent highly publicized flap over perceived anti-American comments made by the pastor of his CHRISTIAN church.

While a majority -- 53 percent -- identify Obama as a Christian, 16 percent of conservative Republicans, 16 percent of white evangelical Protestants and 19 percent of rural Americans believe the Illinois senator is Muslim.

About a third of Americans said they don’t know what Obama’s religious beliefs are, and 9 percent of that group said it’s because they’ve heard different information about his faith.

Perhaps it’s due to a kind of stunned disbelief on the part of the less progressive among us that we’ve actually reached a point where there’s a real possibility that a black man or a white woman could become the next president of the United States.