The birthers

We told the birthers for years that they were out of their minds, about this conspiracy that was so enormous that it included the Republican governor of Hawaii who certified that Obama is a citizen, the Republican members of Congress who certified his election victory, the Republican vice president who ratified that vote, the Republican President who handed the White House to him, the Republican-dominated Supreme Court which repeatedly rejected challenges to his eligibility for the White House, and the Republican Chief Justice who swore him in. Twice.

They proved impervious to facts, so Obama released the birth certificate. And by the same afternoon, the birthers were spinning up even more baseless accusations and conspiracy theories. “Where does he get the nerve to publicly debunk the birthers? He’s suppressing evidence! Why did he take so long to release it? Why did we have to force him to release it? It's amazing that all of a sudden it materializes. Why all the secrecy? Why was the birth certificate moved to a secret location? Where are his school records, and how did such an obviously unqualified [i.e. black] guy get into Harvard? The press is protecting him, helping him hide his records! His birth certificate is a fake! He was adopted as Indonesian and lost his American citizenship! He used a fake Social Security number! His birth certificate shouldn’t say ‘African’! It says the word Kenya right on the form!!! And it says nothing about his religion – what’s up with that??  What’s the explanation for the mysterious X’s, the smudges in the reporting-attendant box, the vertical numbers on the right side? Why is the registrar named “Ukelele” [actually, U. K. L. Lee]? Why wasn’t the document registered the day he was born? Why is the green background so seamless when the document was in a curved, bound volume? Why is the signing physician conveniently dead when he was only born 89 years ago (and probably buried with Vince Foster!)? This proves he’s ineligible because of his father!”

That’s just in a few hours. Insanity can run laps around the world, while facts and logic are still tying on their shoes.

Just imagine if these people had used the same scrutiny with, say, the Declaration of Independence. “Who’s this guy Dunlap who printed the Declaration, and where are all the lost copies? Where is the “fair copy” they actually voted on? How come we only got the printed version, not the handwritten version? Why is the ink on the engrossed copy suspiciously fading? Why are there multiple official versions? How come Jefferson didn’t give Tom Paine credit for his writing? Plagiarism! Who signed this thing, did they bring ID? Did anyone check their signatures? Some of those guys weren’t even members of Congress that July! We know some of those delegations voted against independence! How come it wasn’t really signed on the 4^th of July? Jefferson, Franklin and Adams all thought it was signed on the fourth but it wasn’t! What are they hiding? Didn’t they know they were breaking the law when they signed it? It’s invalid! Why were there hundreds of changes, none of them recorded? How come they misspelled “unalienable”, with all those college graduates in the room?”

“And where are all their birth certificates?”

What if they did the same to the Constitution?

Or the Bible?

Or John McCain’s birth certificate, from Central America? Oh, right, I forgot. He’s white.

Once the last of the air leaks out of the birth-certificate balloon, they will move on to new conspiracy theories; the World Net Daily people are already shrieking that “there are still dozens of other questions concerning this question of eligibility that need to be resolved to assure what has become a very skeptical public concerning Barack Obama’s parentage, his adoption, his citizenship status throughout his life and why he continues to cultivate a culture of secrecy around his life."

The problem lies largely with the media. The reporters have watched almost silently as the GOP smear machine has spent three years firehosing lies and attacks at Obama. He lost the public option because the media didn’t shoot down the lies. He lost the House because the media didn’t shoot down the lies. So he finally realized he had to do their job for them, by revealing his birth documents. And even then they were giving him static as he was doing his briefing: they were wondering why Obama was talking about the birth certificate instead of the economy, and Obama pointed out that he wouldn’t have gotten as much coverage, talking about the economy. The media proved his point by covering Donald Trump’s birth-certificate press conference in toto, while doing just a quick touch-and-go on the Fed chair’s media event the same day.