February 2, 2010: Beck: Obama Un-American for Using Given Name of ‘Barack’

Conservative radio host Glenn Beck suggests to his listeners that President Obama chooses to use his given name of “Barack” to identify with his “Kenyan… heritage” and anti-American “radicals.” Beck, talking with his co-host Pat Gray, says that Obama deliberately switched from his childhood nickname of “Barry” in order to “make a statement” and “fit in” with his “anti-American,” “radical” friends in college. “You know what?” Beck says. “This sounds ridiculous. But I don’t believe it is. Maybe it is.… He chose to use his name Barack for a reason—to identify, not with America—you don’t take the name Barack to identify with America. You take the name Barack to identify with what? Your heritage? The heritage, maybe, of your father in Kenya, who is a radical? Is—really? Searching for something to give him any kind of meaning, just as he was searching later in life for religion.” [Media Matters, 2/4/2010]