Dec 7, 2009 6:15 am US/Pacific
Mayor: 'Muslim' Obama Blocked 'Peanuts' On Purpose
Arlington, Tenn. Mayor Russell Wiseman Slams President On Facebook For 'Deliberately' Making TV Speech When Charlie Brown Movie Was To Air
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
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President Barack Obama makes a statement from the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, D.C., upon his return from Camp David on Nov. 8, 2009.
Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
A small town mayor is under fire for what he wrote about the President online.
Mayor Russell Wiseman of Arlington, Tennessee, called President Obama a Muslim on his Facebook page, attacked Obama's supporters, and said the president's primetime address on Tuesday about the U.S. military's strategy in Afghanistan was a deliberate effort to block the airing of the cartoon "A Charlie Brown Christmas."
The Commercial Appeal reported Wiseman's comments, posted on his Facebook page, which included the claim that the president is Muslim.
Mr. Obama is
Christian.
According to the newspaper, the mayor's first posting read, "Ok, so, this is total crap, we sit the kids down to watch 'The Charlie Brown Christmas Special' and our muslim president is there, what a load.....try to convince me that wasn't done on purpose. Ask the man if he believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and he will give you a 10 minute disertation (sic) about it....w...hen the answer should simply be 'yes'...."
In another posting Wiseman attacked the President, his supporters and Muslims, by saying "...you obama people need to move to a muslim country...oh wait, that's America....pitiful."
Area voter Jeff Shackelford told
CBS affiliate WREG-TV in Memphis that the President of the United States had "more important things to be thinking about instead of trying to block Charlie Brown on TV."
Ryan Williams told WREG, "I just think it's ridiculous that people blow stuff like this way out of proportion. He's trying to lead a country, not change religious values here."
Wiseman downplayed the posting when contacted by the newspaper Thursday. He did not immediately return media phone calls.
On Saturday his
Facebook page was down showing a "Page not found" error, although competing Facebook groups were started by both supporters and critics. A
cached version of Wiseman's page was still visible via a Google search.
On the Facebook page, "
Tell Russell Wiseman To Respect Charlie Brown And Our President," a retired Army major and Afghan veteran wrote, "I am astonished that an elected municipal leader would be so ill-informed as to not know that the president was scheduled to deliver a major policy speech on our efforts in Afghanistan. Second, I find the Mayor's allegations about the president's religious views repugnant."
On the "
Support Russell Wiseman" page, a Facebook user wrote, "Russel is human and needs to vent. That was his personal site and it is nobody elses business but his and his friends. He did not post on the City website, it is his right as an American!"
According to
his profile on Arlington's official Web site, Wiseman has been mayor of the town since 2003, after having been re-elected in 2007. It also says he and his family are active members of
Sycamore View Church of Christ in Memphis.
CBSNews.com contributed to this report.
(© 2010 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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