One in ten Americans scare me.

Barack Obama does not seem be a Muslim. He goes to a Christian church, which made headlines during the campaign for the Democrat nomination for all sorts of reasons, and took the oath on a bible. Yet 11% of Americans polled apparently think he's a Muslim. It's not clear whether they think he's a Muslim because all the atom bomb sized clues to him being a Christian somehow managed to escape their attention or because they think he's just pretending and really he's a secret Muslim, and I suppose the latter is at least possible. But you could believe that of potentially anyone including any other US President, at least one of which has done a fair job of inflaming Islamic feelings towards the West in general and the US in particular. Or it might also be that 11% of Americans will believe absolutely anything you tell them if they think it's vaguely plausible (I'm not crowing - the same could probably be said of Brits, Aussies and just about anyone else, but there doesn't seem to be anyone seriously suggesting that Gordon Clown or Kevin Rudd are anything other than what they appear to be). "Gee, he's got a funny sounding name: Obama. Heyyyy, doesn't that sound a bit like Osama to you?" Actually put like that it could also be that 11% of Americans are channelling Homer Simpson.

To be honest this doesn't really worry me. Not really, though what people are prepared to believe in the face of all evidence, or with the lack of any evidence whatsoever, never ceases to amaze me. But as someone who lives a very secular life it is ever so slightly worrying that perhaps 30 million people think that believing in one version of someone that might well not exist is any better than believing in an alternative version of the same hypothetical being. I wonder what they'd think if a President or candidate said that they didn't believe in any version at all, though perhaps accepted the possibility. In the UK or Australia it might not even make the news, but in the US? The picture we get of America from the outside might well be very distorted but it seems that if 1 in 10 are worried about what religion the President is then having no religion at all might be electoral suicide over there. I've said before that I honestly don't care what people believe in if it doesn't involve forcing others to believe the same, but I do wonder if faith being almost a prerequisite for power in the world's largest and most advanced economy is necessarily a good thing.

And on the subject of Americans, in the same way that last September I couldn't understand why I should care that someone who was only the daughter of someone who was only a candidate not for the actual Presidency but only Vice President got up the duff, I don't understand now why I should give a flying fuck what the eventual Vice President's adult daughter sticks up her nose. Did she rob anyone else to buy the stuff? There's no suggestion that she did. Her dad may be especially anti-drugs but why should anyone expect that a 27 year old would necessarily have the same opinion on any issue as her parents? And why does The Times feel I need to know anyway? Nothing to see here, move along, move along.