Barack "Tutankhamen" Obama to Show Empathy for Muslim World!

A new CNN polling report finds that just one in five Americans holds a favorable view of the Muslim world.

Meanwhile, the Muslim world hearts them some Barack "Tutankhamen" Obama! According to the Los Angeles Times:

A souvenir shop in Cairo, where Obama will speak Thursday, hawks a T-shirt with the slogan “Obama: New Tutankhamen of the World.” Aides says he will deploy a diplomacy of personality that rests on the hunch that the best way to make friends for his country is by winning them over himself.

When President Obama takes the podium in Cairo this week for his much-anticipated speech to the Muslim world, he'll stand before them as an American leader born of an African Muslim father and raised partly in Indonesia, as well as a politician who cut his political teeth in an Illinois political culture that has a sizable Muslim population.

And he will talk, aides say, about those roots he shares with the Muslim world.

It is a politics of biography rapidly becoming synonymous with the Obama presidency. The message he hopes to deliver to Muslims, outlined by advisors ahead of the president's departure Wednesday for the Middle East, will draw on the same storytelling instincts Obama has employed with great success at home.

Now, as Obama attempts to forge new relations with a Muslim community that is at best suspicious of American motives, he relies on a diplomacy of personality that rests on the hunch that the best way to make friends for his country is by winning them over himself.

"The fact is that the president himself experienced Islam on three continents before he's been able to visit, really, the heart of the Islamic world," said Denis McDonough, Obama's deputy national security advisor for strategic communications. The president sees a fundamental need, McDonough said, to change "how we engage our allies."

So when Obama arrives in the region Wednesday, advisors say, he won't be carrying detailed policy proposals, but rather an appeal focusing on common experience and mutual respect.

That is, he'll be carrying "empathy."

President Tutankhamen wouldn't want to alienate the 32 percent of Muslims in Nigeria and Pakistan who support suicide bombings to defend Islam; nor the 37 percent in Indonesia. Nor would President Tutenkhaman want to alienate the 55 percent of Palestinians who support continued suicide bombings against Israel.

At that's not even counting President Tutenkhamen's U.S. Muslim consituency: Old "Pres Tut" wouldn't want to offend the 25 percent of young American Muslims who support suicide bombings in defense of Islam.

But no worries, he's going to make friends in the Islamic world by winning them over with "empathy."

And by the way: According to Wikipedia, "Tutankhamun was one of the few kings worshiped as a god and honored with a cult in his own lifetime."

Well, as they say, "The light of the New Age is here."

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JammieWearingFool has more, "'Obama: New Tutankhamun of the World'."