Wampum

Bob Kerry steps in it a second time in 48 hours. On CNN last night:

BOB KERREY: "It's something by the way I have told Barack Obama when I've met with him. It something that I've spoken about before. So this is not something that just sort of came out of the head birth out there in Iowa. I've thought about it a great deal. I've watched the blogs try to say that you can't trust him because he spent a little bit of time in a secular madrassa. I feel quite the opposite. I feel it's a tremendous strength whether he is in the United States Senate or whether he's in the White House, I think it's a tremendous asset for him.

I've been following this story around the net for the past day, watching HRC/Kerrey supporters claim there is nothing insidious about Kerrey's comments. One tact in particular takes this line that "madrassa" is simply a word for school, so there's no dogwhistling going on, no racial or religious underpinnings to Kerrey's comments.

Yes, but madrassa (madrasah) is an Arabic word. Obama attended a state-run elementary school in Indonesia, where the official language is Indonesian, a standardized dialect of Malay. The word for school in Indonesian is "sekolah."