Um. Wow.

Thursday's episode of Crosstalk America featured Floyd Brown, author of a book called Obama Unmasked. I haven't paid an awful lot of attention to the Presidential campaign (living in Santa Fe tends to minimize the value one places on one's vote), but I was under the impression that the "Barack Obama is a Muslim" whisper campaign was exactly that: just a whisper campaign.

Apparently not; I didn't listen very closely, but I believe I heard Brown suggesting that not only is Barack Obama not really an American, he's also not really a Christian, because he converted from Islam to some sort of black liberation sect that isn't really Christian. Given the position that Crosstalk America stakes out for itself I guess I expected the host, Jim Schneider, to have asked Brown about Obama's conversion story.

Maybe he did; I stopped listening when the calls started. It's very difficult for a call-in show to be compelling listening, and Crosstalk doesn't typically manage.

In the interest of fairness I should also point out that at no time did Schneider endorse John McCain.