But you can’t entirely take the madrassah out of the politician that the boy becomes. Obama whines about his “some powerful interests” and their opinion of him:
“Some powerful interests that have been setting the agenda in Washington for a long time, and they’re not always happy with me. They talk about me like a dog. That’s not in my prepared remarks, but it’s true.”
To me, the most interesting aspect of this is that the first negative thing that sprang to mind when Obama wanted to express how people were badmouthing him, he thought of “a dog”. That is not a normal American expression. One works like a dog, one is as loyal as a dog, one is dog-tired, whereas the negative forms tend to utilize the term “bitch” instead. Using dog in this perjorative sense is much more common in the Arab world.
It seems to me that this is, in addition to demonstrating Obama’s inability to withstand legitimate criticism, an example of his Indonesian Muslim upbringing showing itself in a moment of stress. This doesn’t mean he is a crypto-Muslim, but it is rather yet another indication of his essentially foreign perspective. In support of this interpretation, I would note that while I have seen many distinctly negative terms applied to Obama since he first launched his presidential candidacy, I have never read nor heard of him being referred to as “a dog”.