Is Obama the Antichrist?

Of course not. But this is the kind of garbage being passed around. It just flopped over my e-mail transom:

According to The Book of Revelations the anti-Christ is:

The anti-Christ will be a man, in his 40s, of MUSLIM descent, who will deceive the nations with persuasive language, and have a MASSIVE Christ-like appeal....the prophecy says that people will flock to him and he will promise false hope and world peace, and when he is in power, will destroy everything. Is it OBAMA??

I STRONGLY URGE each one of you to repost this as many times as you can! Each opportunity that you have to send it to a friend or media outlet

Which the person who sent this to me did. I hesitate to dignify this garbage with exposure here, but people should understand what's being sent around. The moron who wrote this doesn't even understand that it's "Revelation," not "Revelations." And Revelation says absolutely nothing about the Antichrist being a Muslim. Nothing.

I usually just trash these e-mails and don't think about it. But I was surprised, and disheartened, to see that the person who sent it to me is someone I know well and respect. Rather than just let it pass, I wrote this back to him:

[Name], why would you send around that Antichrist stuff? It's not true. That has nothing to do with the Bible. The book of Revelation (not "Revelations") does not mention Muslims at all. Whoever wrote this is flat-out lying, either consciously or unconsciously. I'm not an Obama voter by any means, and I don't think he would be good for the country -- which is why I'm not voting for him. Nevertheless, I don't think it's right to just pass on these plainly false rumors slandering the guy based on absolutely no evidence.

I was in South Carolina in 2000, covering the Republican primaries for the New York Post. Republican activists who opposed John McCain passed around rumors that he had fathered a black baby. In fact, John and Cindy McCain had adopted a Bangladeshi girl from one of Mother Teresa's orphanages. Mrs. McCain had brought the little girl, who has dark skin, to the US for medical treatment, and they decided to adopt her. People who hated McCain, though, passed around the rumor that she was his illegitimate black baby. There wasn't a lick of truth to it. It was pure ugliness, and it ended up hurting McCain.

I just hate to see good people like you get mixed up in this kind of stuff, even just by forwarding it. Please think about this next time you get something like this in e-mail from a stranger who asks you to pass it along. If conservatives have to resort to sleazy tactics like this to beat Obama, we don't deserve to win.

I think this is what we conservatives should do when we get this kind of thing in our e-mail boxes from people we know, and have a relationship with. (I would ask liberal readers too to respond in kind when scurrilous smears about McCain get passed around on e-mail by their friends). This dirty stuff is going to go on no matter what we say, but I think we have an obligation not to stand by and let it get said without objection.