{"id":52480,"date":"2012-11-05T09:40:00","date_gmt":"2012-11-05T14:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/familyinequality.wordpress.com\/?p=4932"},"modified":"2012-11-30T01:59:57","modified_gmt":"2012-11-30T06:59:57","slug":"have-obama-conspiracy-theories-lost-tractionn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/11\/05\/have-obama-conspiracy-theories-lost-tractionn\/","title":{"rendered":"Have Obama Conspiracy Theories Lost Traction?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For whatever reason, there has been a real slump in the number of people typing \u201cobama gun\u201d (will he <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10000872396390444433504577651393759726660.html\">take our guns away<\/a>?), \u201cobama muslim\u201d (the idea used to <a href=\"http:\/\/thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com\/2010\/03\/10\/new-study-sorts-through-obama-muslim-myth\/\">run at about 20%<\/a>), \u201cobama socialist\u201d (the republic \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/news\/2012\/nov\/1\/obama-and-the-future-of-our-republic-re-election-w\/\">hangs in the balance<\/a>\u201c), and \u201cobama citizen\u201d (thank you, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.snopes.com\/politics\/obama\/citizen.asp\">Snopes<\/a>) into the Google search box since the 2008 election.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s the Google trend (and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/trends\/explore#q=Obama%20gun%2C%20Obama%20muslim%2C%20obama%20socialist%2C%20obama%20citizen&amp;geo=US&amp;date=1%2F2006%2083m&amp;cmpt=q\">search link<\/a>):<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/familyinequality.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/11\/obama-haters.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4933\" title=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/familyinequality.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/11\/obama-haters.jpg?w=500&amp;h=397\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"397\" \/><\/a>We don\u2019t know how much these fears, versus other concerns, will affect votes against him this year, although there have been some <a href=\"http:\/\/familyinequality.wordpress.com\/2012\/01\/26\/googling-racism-votes-for-obama-and-population-composition\/\">good efforts<\/a> to track the effects of anti-Black racism on his vote tally.<\/p>\n<p>Naturally, not everyone who Googles these things believes the underlying stories or myths. But it seems likely they either believe them, are considering them, heard someone repeat them, or are arguing with someone who believes them, etc. So I\u2019m guessing \u2013 just guessing \u2013 that these trends track those beliefs.<\/p>\n<p>But maybe four years of Obama as an actual president has softened up the\u00a0hard-line\u00a0hatred in some quarters. What do you think?<\/p>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\">Philip N. Cohen is a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, and writes the blog <a href=\"http:\/\/www.familyinequality.com\">Family Inequality<\/a>. You can follow him on <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/familyunequal\">Twitter<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/FamilyInequality\">Facebook<\/a>.<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why the hate slippage?<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/stats.wordpress.com\/b.gif?host=familyinequality.wordpress.com&amp;blog=10222819&amp;post=4932&amp;subd=familyinequality&amp;ref=&amp;feed=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":287,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2126,2125,85,8121,283,693,285,1760,42],"class_list":["post-52480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-communismsocialism","tag-immigrationcitizenship","tag-politics","tag-election-2012","tag-prejudicediscrimination","tag-public-opinion","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-blacksafricans","tag-religion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/287"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52480"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52498,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52480\/revisions\/52498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}