He's not an Arab...but so what if he was?

Though I have strong political opinions, I usually don't make my blog about this. But I just had to link to a commentary by Campbell Brown on CNN who says something that I have been waiting a long time for someone in the mainstream media to say.

After showing a video of McCain stopping a woman who calls Obama an Arab and saying "No, he's a decent man, a family man," Brown says this:

Now, I commend Senator McCain for correcting that woman, for setting the record straight. But I do have one question. So what if he was? So what if Obama was Arab or Muslim? So what if John McCain was Arab or Muslim? Would it matter? When did that become a disqualifier for higher office in our country? When did Arab and Muslim being dirty words, the equivalent of dishonorable or radical?

Eight years ago a little gang of psychopaths from Arabic countries committed a horrible crime in America, and justified it according to a twisted interpretation of one of the great faiths of the world. We need to get over that and stop equating the terms "Arab" and "Muslim" (which are two distinct things, though you wouldn't know it from the way they're interchanged) with the term "terrorist."