THIS JUST IN!!! Obama’s real Kenyan birth certificate has been discovered! OOPS…Wait a minute…Or has it?
The birthers, a growing movement of GOPers who are trying like crazy to find something — anything — to delegitimize Barack Obama’s election and presidency while being fanned on by increasingly paranoid talk show hosts such as Glenn Beck and some Republican politicians, are at it again. There is THIS BIG NEWS! about a birth certificate proving Obama was actually born in Kenya. How about that? A President not only not born in the U. S. of A but in A-f-r-i-c-a.
There seems to be one little problem so far. Just as conservative bloggers seemingly made mince meat out of the accuracy of CBS-touted documents that some insisted would supposedly politically destroy George W Bush, some maintream conservative bloggers and liberal bloggers now seem to be in the process of making mincemeat out this latest birther excercise in trying like crazy to find something — anything — to delegitimize Barack Obama’s election and presidency..
To wit:
–Political scientist Steven Taylor, about as solid an analyst and blogger as you’ll find, writes this:
For some odd reason, the document is dated 1964 (Obama was born in 1961) and yet this document appears to mean more to the Birthers at WND than do contemporaneous birth announcements in Hawaiian newspapers at the time and the official birth certificate as issued by the state of Hawaii.
It also appears to be the case that Kenya did not declare itself to be the “Republic of Kenya” until December 1964, yet the document in question is dated February 17, 1964 and uses the phrase “Republic of Kenya” (see here). Still, this is clearly a more compelling document than those issued by those good-for-nothing, untrustworthy Hawaiian bureaucrats who are obviously in on the conspiracy to install a foreigner in the White House!
Update: LGF has what might in fact be the real Birth Certificate!
–Kos himself, writing at Daily Kos, has THIS LONG MUST-READ POST with specific details (some hilarious) suggesting that this document is not going to go down in history as the document that removed Obama from the White House.
—The conservative blog The Jawa Report has a lot to say including this:
Seriously – for those still clinging to the Birther fable – knock it off. It’s not good for your sanity. You’re wrong, the evidence does not support the conspiracy claims, and you’re making it harder for us out here who are trying to fight bad policy instead of chasing and battling windmills and shadows.
Step away from “the light” and come back to Earth.
–-Conservative blogger Tom McGuire, who has suggested he’s open to a good argument on this issue, also seems to be shaking his head:
So where did this document supposedly come from? It was issued on Feb 17, 1964. To whom, and why? No explanation is offered. How did it happen to be saved all these years? No explanation.
FWIW, Ms. Dunham and Mr. Obama were divorced in January 1964. Why would someone from the Kenyan side of the family want Baby Barack’s birth certificate a month later? But who from the Dunham side of the family would have requested it, saved it, and eventually pitched it to Taitz?
From another direction, some font expert may be able to opine on whether the fonts in use were available in 1964. But all that can do is discredit the document. Offhand, the only way I can think of to validate the document would be to have some Kenyan official do so. Good luck.
–Media Matters is having fun with this “revelation.”
–-Pam’s House Blend:
The weak-minded Birther movement cares little about facts — they accept any fantasy explanation as they go along. They watch head birthers Darth Lou Dobbs and Orly Taitz wield their store-bought lightsabers in the air and the knuckle-dragging Birthers shout “YES!” in unison. They get all stirred up by the latest “evidence” regarding the President’s imagined birth in Kenya…then the facts undo the fantasy.
—Doug Mataconis has a detailed must-read debunking of the certificate and writes:
Something tells me that the birthers are going to be sadly disappointed when this one is revealed for the forgery it most likely is.
PREDICTION: The impending failure of this to be the smoking birth certicate won’t make a bit of difference.
What is really at play is not an effort to show a fact but a burning desire to find something to delegitimize Obama and cast into doubt the entire 2008 election. It’s like the intense beliefs some cling to about the grassy knoll; the assertion by racists (who claimed what they were saying didn’t mean they were racists) in the 1960s that Martin Luther King, Jr. was really, definitely, unquestionably a full-fledged Communist and working with Moscow; or Oliver Stone’s totally unproven assertion that LBJ was involved in the Kennedy assassination.
And, yes, I know there are You Tubes about LBJ’s supposed role in Kennedy’s death. But there is also this birth certificate as well.
During the Bush administration I had someone who insisted she knew the “facts” about Dick Cheney. She rattled off a series of shocking allegations that weren’t just way out there but in another galaxy. She was convinced they were true: she heard them and they were never denied by Cheney. I’m not a fan of Cheney’s but I wondered the next time she said anything to me as fact, I tuned her totally out.
And that’s the problem for the GOP if this remains unchecked and unrepudiated. Strongly.
It’s the notion that if you don’t like someone and lose an election then you scramble in a frenzy to find some way to “get” that person personally and take them out, discredit them because that way you can stop their ideas, halt their proactive efforts to implement their policies that you hate, and discredit all of those who you feel were stupid enough or dumb enough to have voted for him (or her) — and advance your own political “sports team.”
So if something the slightest bit hazy comes up, it’s injected with several gallons of political paranoia and bile. It becomes the truth.
And if you’re challenged to come up with something that proves it’s the truth, you leap at it immediately and trumpet it for all the world to see.
This trumpet blast is turning into a massive sour note.
The bad news: Some are really into this and the movement seems to be growing as the GOP leadership and talk radio show hosts (and people such as the no-longer-mainstream CNN’s Lou Dobbs) continue to enable it, rather than use their powers or leadership or influence over audiences to halt it. It makes our political debate not about policies, but all about frantic attempts to “get” those who with whom we disagree.
The good news: There are thoughtful conservatives who are joining with liberals and centrists to put this into perspective and who are asking pointed questions and who want no part of this.
For more reaction GO HERE and keep refreshing it.
And be sure to read THIS via Andrew Sullivan.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.