The Berserk 'Birthers'
By Eugene Robinson
WashPost
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
If there's been a more clinically insane political phenomenon in my lifetime than the "birthers," I've missed it. Is this what our national discourse has come to? Sheer paranoid fantasy?
I'm talking about the people who have convinced themselves that Barack Obama was not really born in the United States, and thus is ineligible to be president. Even some commentators who usually are among Obama's most rabid critics have acknowledged that this idea is simply nuts. Yet it persists, out there on the farthest fringes of the right-wing blogosphere. Oh, and also on CNN, which is usually a little closer to reality.
It has been definitively shown that there is not a scintilla of truth, or even the slightest ambiguity, in the whole "birther" idea. Officials in Hawaii have attested again and again that Obama was, in fact, born in Honolulu on Aug. 4, 1961. When the "birthers" demanded to see his birth certificate, state officials produced it. Journalists have looked at this complete non-story from every angle and concluded that it is, in fact, a complete non-story.
To believe otherwise, it's necessary to explain that birth announcements heralding the arrival of baby boy Barack Obama ran in two Honolulu newspapers in August 1961. So to be a card-carrying "birther," you have to believe not only that Hawaiian officials conspired to fabricate records but also that "they" -- not state officials, necessarily, but the generic malevolent "they" who inevitably lurk behind the deepest, darkest conspiracies -- somehow managed to alter or replace clippings in yellowing newspaper archives.
(More here.)
WashPost
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
If there's been a more clinically insane political phenomenon in my lifetime than the "birthers," I've missed it. Is this what our national discourse has come to? Sheer paranoid fantasy?
I'm talking about the people who have convinced themselves that Barack Obama was not really born in the United States, and thus is ineligible to be president. Even some commentators who usually are among Obama's most rabid critics have acknowledged that this idea is simply nuts. Yet it persists, out there on the farthest fringes of the right-wing blogosphere. Oh, and also on CNN, which is usually a little closer to reality.
It has been definitively shown that there is not a scintilla of truth, or even the slightest ambiguity, in the whole "birther" idea. Officials in Hawaii have attested again and again that Obama was, in fact, born in Honolulu on Aug. 4, 1961. When the "birthers" demanded to see his birth certificate, state officials produced it. Journalists have looked at this complete non-story from every angle and concluded that it is, in fact, a complete non-story.
To believe otherwise, it's necessary to explain that birth announcements heralding the arrival of baby boy Barack Obama ran in two Honolulu newspapers in August 1961. So to be a card-carrying "birther," you have to believe not only that Hawaiian officials conspired to fabricate records but also that "they" -- not state officials, necessarily, but the generic malevolent "they" who inevitably lurk behind the deepest, darkest conspiracies -- somehow managed to alter or replace clippings in yellowing newspaper archives.
(More here.)
Powered by Blogger
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home