I'm amazed--I shouldn't be, but I am--that this birther nonsense is still managing to worm itself into the news cycle, but there you go. We've now got a couple of stories from there, and both from Arizona! Figures, right?
Conspiracy theories are irresistible to people who are desperate to disbelieve something. People who couldn't believe that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman that killed John F. Kennedy, concocted conspiracy theories to explain that it wasn't true. People who couldn't believe a group of terrorists with boxcutters could bring down the World Trade Center towers, invented conspiracy theories to explain that it wasn't true. And, people who just couldn't believe that a black man named Barack Hussein Obama was elected President of the United States, invented conspiracy theories to prove that he couldn't be. . .legally, anyway.
There are people who could harp on me for saying it was because he's a
black man, but tell me why else they're trying to say he was born in Kenya? Why they weren't concerned that John McCain was born in Panama. C'mon, let's be real here. And notice that I didn't say "conspiracy theory," but
"theories." In every master conspiracy theory, there are offshoots and tangents, and the craziest of the crazy. You can't consolidate them all into a unified theory because they don't mesh. And whatever you do, don't try to create a logical, cohesive narrative of what
really happened.
Because, in the case of the
"Obama was born in Kenya" theory, you've got to place Stanley Ann Dunham (Obama's mother) in Kenya, something that has never been proven. You'd have to explain why she was there, and how she got there. This was 1961, a time when air travel was much more expensive and difficult. And she was very pregnant, unless she was in Kenya a long time. And you have to account for this white, pregnant lady's presence in a place where Obama Sr. apparently had
another wife. Then she has to give birth.
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What a birther looks like. Kinda Huckabee-lite.
Image from source, The Raw Story. |
After that, she's got to get home quickly. She has to--for some reason--smuggle little Barack into the United States with no paperwork. She has to arrange--using 1961 communication devices--to have two newspapers get birth announcements published. And she has to leave no paper trail that she made the trip! And
why in the world would she make this secret trip? That's just skimming the surface of the problems with the story.
Fortunately, we need not strain our brains trying to figure this idiotic story out, because others have done that. Literally every single birther theory and "fact" has been debunked.
Go to
ObamaConspiracy.org if you don't believe me. If Dr. Conspiracy can't convince you, you're without hope. But in this world of "the extreme right is now the mainstream," even this nutty theory is being touted by elected officials. But at least some of them are getting their noses rubbed in it.
[Excerpt]
Hawaii turns tables on Arizona Secretary of State’s birther requests
Hawaiian officials have apparently had enough of your requests for President Barack Obama’s birth certificate and they’re not afraid to tell you where to get off, even if you are Arizona’s Secretary of State Ken Bennett or a special delegation sent by Maricopa County’s controversial “Sheriff Joe. . .”
Read more at: The Raw Story
UPDATED: I just wanted to note that I went to
FreeRepublic.com to see the arch-right (and oddly, now
mainstream) take on this story. I said--as I clicked
enter--"They got to him!" And here's what the first comment says:
"Sounds like someone got to him."
Thanks for not disappointing me, FReepers!
