So after Obama releasing his birth certificate yesterday the birthers made appearances on all the MSNBC shows and the MSNBCers just lost it. I mean, Chris Matthews and Lawrence O’Donnell aren’t calm little bunnies, generally speaking, but there’s their usual level of shoutiness and then there was this: Matthews was plainly and visibly furious with the birthers who showed up on his show, and O’Donnell actually cut off Orly Taitz when she started spewing the birthers’ new line of crap (which, for those not in the know, is that Obama supposedly forged his Social Security number at some point and… therefore he’s not President, or something).
You kind of get the feeling that these guys really felt that, if the question of Obama’s birth was finally answered, that finally the birthers would shut up because they wouldn’t have any real ground to stand on. It’s not that they didn’t think the birthers weren’t racist: they knew that. But they thought that the birthers would play by some sort of rules. “Here is the proof you have demanded; you can demand it no more.” But of course this was never about proof; this was about hating and fearing B-Rock the Islamic Supashock, and there aren’t any rules for that.
We’re in postmodern politics now, and the tribalism can only get rawer from here.
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Even worse is that Trump wants his academic records.
I’m waiting for someone to claim that the President doesn’t actually exist and is possibly a robot making all legislation and taxes null and void.
Make that an Muslim Terrorist Robot.
Can anyone verify this so-called ‘real’ birth certificate was acutally issues on Earth Prime?
For all we know Obama is one of those dirty Earth 2ers and therefore not eligable to be President on Earth Prime.
Indulgence in conspiracy theory is so obviously a psychological defence mechanism that it is just pointless to note that victims are not amenable to reason. It’s not about anything but the crazy.
I think this article says it best:
http://www.baratunde.com/blog/2011/4/27/with-president-obamas-birth-certificate-klansman-trump-remin.html
Okay, from now on I’m tempted to start calling the President B-Rock the Islamic Supershock.
Wait, are WE Earth Prime? I thought we were Earth ‘The Fighting Mongooses’?
Are there pacifist mongooses? I don’t wanna fight snakes!
“B-Rock The Islamic Supashock” would be a great stage name.
@Sofa King: http://www.tep-online.info/fable/mongoose.htm
If Matthews and O’Donnell honestly thought that it would all stop when Obama released his birth certificate, then they’re probably the only ones. When people put this much time and effort into spewing this much utter bullshit, they ain’t gonna stop just because of some silly facts.
But hey, maybe carrying on the rhetoric in the face of the same evidence they’ve been asking for for two years will be enough to discredit them, and they’ll all run off scurrying into some faraway corner somewhere. Yeah, and just maybe the sky is pink, snow is warm, and gasoline is clean, cheap, and plentiful. A guy can dream, can’t he?
Let’s put the Birthers under the same scrutiny they want to put Obama under.
Starting with Trump’s financial records.
I think the Onion hit this one on the head
http://www.theonion.com/articles/trump-unable-to-produce-certificate-proving-hes-no,20250/
http://www.theonion.com/articles/afterbirthers-demand-to-see-obamas-placenta,6866/
I really, really can’t envision what US social studies books are going to look like 50 years down the road. If you told me a three years ago that the election of the first black president would usher in a period defining the worst of America, I would have at least crooked an eyebrow at you.
What Ben said.
NCallahan: My feelings exactly. It’s odd how the election of the first black president ushered in some of the most racist bullshit I’ve seen in my lifetime. It seems like it wasn’t that long ago (1980s? 1990s?) that when people were just flat-out crazy, evil nutjobs, the rest of us just went, “Well, they’re nutjobs. Who gives a shit what they say?” Now we all feel obligated to sit down with them and debate the craziness on a point-by-point basis, and every time they scream “Obama’s a Hindu pod person out to eat all our healthcare!” we feel the need to go back and have those same arguments again.
I blame the Internet.
Really, at this point, the only answer for Ms. Taitz and her ilk is ruthless mockery, mercilessly applied. Mr. O’Donnell shouldn’t have cut her off, he should have made fun of her until she ran away.
Actually it’s B-Rock “the Islamic Shock” Hussein Superallah Obama as documented on his one true birth certificate.
http://direct.pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/the_true_story_of_blackazoid/
And his facebook page.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/B-Rock-The-Islamic-Shock-Hussein-Superallah-Obama/126701614038484
But see, if the birthers can just prove to the world that Obama broke the rule of “only an American-born citizen can be president”, then every nation on the planet will realize they were fooled! We’ll be able to have a great big “do over”, with the Democrats running Hillary against Mc-Cain for the 2008 election, and it’ll mean that the last several years never happened!
Seriously though, the Obama birth certificate conspiracy is up there with the “W. plotted 9/11”, “Clinton committed secret murders”, “Reagan brokered a deal with the Iranians to hold the hostages”, “LBJ was in on it”, “JFK was killed by the mob/industrio-military complex”, “FDR allowed Pearl Harbor to happen”, and other presidential myths and conspiracy theories. Heck, I think every nation that distrusts its government has them.
What’s more amusing/disturbing are the ones later proven to be true (Clinton’s affairs, Nixon’s tapings, Johnson’s affairs, Reagan’s senility during his second Presidential term, etc. etc.).
I forgot another, somewhat relevant, one: “W. stole the election”.
I think there’s a longstanding tradition in American politics that if people don’t like the President they want to “undo” his election. I can find people walking around who practice the idea of the “stolen” Presidency as far back as Nixon/JFK (go watch their televised debates to see just how amusing this notion is). I’m sure it was equally common before that though.
The “birther” movement is interesting because it plays into long-standing xenophobic fears on the right. They look at Obama and recognize him as “different”, but in their defense xenophobia isn’t limited to just skin color. I know several Republicans who didn’t consider Romney a Christian because he is a Mormon, and that cost him their support (don’t tell me, I don’t get it either). Not that all birthers aren’t racist, just that you don’t have to be a racist to be a birther.
Well, the whole “W stole the election” thing doesn’t hold up because when W won a second term, people didn’t claim it was stolen. Another way to put it would be that W winning his second term was akin to Obama showing his birth certificates. The difference is that those who claimed he stole the election were somewhat rational and accepted it no longer mattered, whereas the Birthers movement is irrational from its conceptual basis and refuses to accept reality in any meaningful way.
Actually Bass, there were second Election conspiracies. They pointed to supposed “Thuggery” in Ohio, supposedly closing certain polls early, people being bullied out of line, etcetera.
It was faintly ridiculous, and it was very prominent on some of the big left wing blogs.
Anyone have a link to Chris Matthews’ bit on it? I did see O’Donnell’s
I feel that someone needs to call him the n-word on camera, so we can just get it the hell over with and out in the open. Fucking white people.
I am a Black male, and I approve of that message Cookie. I feel if someone just bust out the n-word on Obama on camera then in the end, everyone would relax and calm down….or at least use stategeries that are more sound than the birther one.
I don’t think any conspiracy theory has ever been stopped by facts. If these people were swayed by facts, they would never believe these conspiracies in the first place.
Observations:
1. What took the President this long to produce the certificate? I’m not claiming shenanigans, but I didn’t think he would actually do it. What, did he let his staff set up a pool as to when he’d bring it out?
2. Does anybody think this would shut Trump up? Of course not. He’s the Black Knight, chewing on the President’s ankles as he bleeds from where his limbs used to be?
3. Why did Obama want to be President? He only had four years on the national scene in 2008. I’m not saying his candidacy was a mistake, but he’s basically the Blue Lantern of Sector 2814 (illustrated here), and the entire right wing has been trying to rip his ring off. It’s been painful to watch. Even if the main GOP contenders for 2012 are complete buttheads like Trump and Palin, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he declined to go for a second term.
@Jason:
1. Well, in part because the long-form birth certificate isn’t something the State of Hawaii releases just because you ask nicely. You have to ask super-duper-nicely for a waiver, and put cherries on top of your request. Maybe even sprinkles. As for the rest, that would involve me being privy to his thoughts, which I’m not, but I suspect at least some of his thoughts were along the lines of “I’ve got more important things to worry about.”
2. Nope. I do think Trump’s crowing makes him look like even more of an ass.
3. At best, probably he thought he could do some good. At worst … uh, well, I’m not even sure I can speculate, to be honest. It’s hard for me to imagine someone choosing to try to run for President knowing that he’d be attacked for his race, his funny name, and his relative youth and inexperience even before he opened his mouth for the first soundbite.
Except George W. Bush did steal the election, both times.
We have a tradition of voter suppression here, aimed at “urban” populations, students, the poor, and anyone else who tends to vote Democrat. Between voter caging, purging the rolls of people with “enthnic” names similar to felons, and allocating too few voting machines to cities, there is a constant assault on the right to vote.
One of the easiest ways to see this is to look at the lines in polling places — very long in inner cities, very short in suburbs.
Overall, it shaves a couple of points off the result, and skews the vote Republican.
Florida in 2000 was too close to call with all these shenanigans, and Ohio in 2004 was close enough that it probably made a difference.
Dirge, the thing about “W stole the election” theories is that nobody I’m aware of ever argued he couldn’t send troops to Iraq because he didn’t have the right to command. And he didn’t have members of Congress saying “well, there might be something to this” as a few have said about birtherism.
I do think it’s close to “Clinton is a murdering drug-dealer and Vince Foster was assassinated to hide what he knew.”
Nobody would have assumed actually showing the birth certificate would make a difference. I had to visit a couple of the major birther websites a couple of years back and both of them asserted that “Well, it would be good if we could see the certificate—-but we’d have lots more questions and we’d need lots more evidence.”
With both Clinton and Obama, I think it’s that a lot of Repubs can’t accept that a president they didn’t vote for could possibly be legitimate.
What I’m hoping is that the release of the certificate causes Trump to gain even more creditability with the batshit half of the Republican party. I actually want Trump as the nominee. Basically every person who votes for candidate Trump is a person who has cast sanity aside. I’d like the moderate Republicans, the Compassionate Conservatives, and the idiots in the middle to have to decide once and for all whether they believe in sanity. If they do, they won’t vote for Trump. It’s entirely possible that 30%+ of the American electorate is actively insane. Time to stand up and be counted.
@Aulayan: I didn’t know that. I’m in the UK and the “Bush stole 2004” line (which Gustopher agrees wit) did not make it over here.
@Bass: Typically, when people say Bush stole the election, they mean in 2000 (Florida specifically). But yeah, there were repeat murmurings in ’04.
@fsherman: Actually, there were a lot of people in Congress attacking W’s legitimacy, but W had the advantage of 9/11 silencing most disagreement with his policies and rumblings that he wasn’t President and didn’t have the right to send troops (Gore’s eventual acceptance didn’t hurt either).
It also didn’t hurt W that he was coming in to power after the prosperity of the 90’s, which helped keep people more content. Plus, in 2000 the Republicans still held a majority chunk of Congress. By comparison, Obama inherited a nation in recession with a populace that had a renewed interest in mistrusting the government. And Obama has since gone on to have to deal with a very strong Republican party.
I’d be curious to see how things would’ve been different if 9/11 happened in 2011 or if Obama had run and won in 2000 (I know, I know. It’s a thought experiment, just run with it).
[…] 28th – That was the last inch – But of course this was never about proof; this was about hating and fearing B-Rock the […]
@Jason: to amplify what Rachel said, the President released what was legally required for any offical use (but that wasn’t good enough for the nutbags) during the 2008 campaign. He did not then, and does not now, have the authority to ‘release’ the document provided earlier this week. That document, as required by Hawaii state law, required special dispensation by the Governor of Hawaii to release.
I’m inclined to take the President at his word that he finally directed his legal team to seek the release of this document from the State of Hawaii because of the debate surrounding a fake stunt candidate (who is NOT going to run for any elected office anyway) and his fake concerns over a non-issue that the lunatic fringe believes is a ‘magic bullet’ to undo the last two years of social and political policy made by the current administration was taking up enough media attention as to distract from actually important policy discussion on the House budget as to constitute a compelling state interest to seek this document, which, as previously stated, requires somewhat extraordinary actions by the State of Hawaii.
And, of course, it doesn’t matter to the nutbags who now think they can prove it’s a fake and nullify Obama’s Presidency.
(there may be some political timing at work here, also. Notice no other Republican candidate has gotten any media attention in the last few days, and that state of affairs is likely to continue up to the first Republican debate next week, where is almost certinly to be a question regarding this document. Which will put current candidates in a box with the nutjobs, or cause them to defend themselves against the nutjobs. So there’s that.)
“Really, at this point, the only answer for Ms. Taitz and her ilk is ruthless mockery, mercilessly applied. ”
I agree. Argument is useless (although they still have to be made to make a point to moderate observers), what really cuts to the bone with these people is mockery. They are terrified of looking stupid, since they spend so much time trying to look smart. There is a danger though, in losing the dignity of discourse. Light-hearted humourous mockery often strikes a good balance, best to save the really vicious mockery for the worst cases. Taitz is a true clown, probably deserves the harsh version. It might not shut her down directly, but it might dry up her support (financial or otherwise, if she gets any).
Heard that Trump is questioning the President’s intelligence through collegiate activities. See, this is why I’m not president, and Obama is way too cool. I would’ve been all, “Hey, did you see the last guy who had my job? And you’re asking how smart I am?!? Oh, and how can you fire anybody from The Apprentice?!? YOU HAVEN’T HIRED ANY OF THE CONTESTANTS YET!!!”
If Obama’s hair isn’t full-on white by 1/20/17 (assuming the Mayans were wrong about the end of the world), I will be surprised.
Hell, at this point, I’d be surprised if he even has any hair by 1/20/17.
Huh, when was the last time America had a bald President? Or do US citizens just plain not vote for baldies?
Obama didn’t seek the release of his birth certificate previously because he thought it benefited him politically to have these whackjobs out there making these claims. He was either wrong or the effect was swamped by the rest of the nutjobbery. He’s releasing it now for the same reason, but I think he’s right on in this case.
Skrulls? Amirite?
Wasn’t Ike bald?
And the Founding Fathers, of course, were all bald, it being customary to shave your head and don a wig back then.
I think it’s time to retire the moniker ‘Birthers,’ and call the conspiracy theorists “Afterbirthers’ from here on in.
It really isn’t – all of those are far more interesting. The Birthers make conspiracy theorists look bad. It’s just boring and racist.
Unless there are folk out there who use it as the basis of something more wacky and entertaining. If so, they should be getting the airtime.
I have heard the theory bandied about that Trump actually WANTS Obama to win and is trying to look as batshit insane as possible to symbolize and summarily discredit birthers, the tea party, and republicans in one fell swoop.
It’s working so far. *shrugs*
Interesting Fact: Obama was born the same day that the NDP elected its first party leader.
Conspiracy theorists: GO!
When Obama was insulting Trump at that press thing a day or two ago, he was… not nice. *I am a reaaal Ameerican”
So if the long-form birth certificate was the last inch, what was finally getting bin Laden? I mean, he just essentially did what Bush Jr. couldn’t do in eight solid years, the symbolic victory in the War On Terror that the Republicans wanted so bad they could taste it (and tried desperately to downplay the importance of when they couldn’t get it.)
And it was all done by someone they don’t believe to be a legitimate American. That’s got to do a number on their psyche.
Not really, Seavey. In addition to the people who simply don’t believe Bin Laden is dead (because obviously, it’s easier to believe that our govt, SEAL Team Six, and everyone else that was in the compound all got together to tell a big lie; and if Bin Laden doesn’t turn up later, well, that’ll just be evidence that he was part of the conspiracy–paid off to go away, maybe?), there’s all the people who are sneering at Obama for being proud of doing it.
Yes, really. I live in a red state–so red, I’ve heard my president referred to as “that nigger” twice this year just at work–and I hear a lot of people criticizing Obama for “taking credit for the kill”. Not to mention making jokes about how close his name is to Osama…and claiming that if he grew a beard and wrapped a towel around his head, they’d look the same, too.
Dumb assholes are pretty much immune to reality checks, unfortunately.
Yeah, I agree with Candlejack. For reasons I still don’t quite understand, I’m Facebook friends with a redneck high school friend who posted (with a ‘this is interesting’ comment) a link this morning to a right-wing website claiming that President Obama froze up in the situation room and Leon Panetta actually issued the ‘go’ order. Cause, you know, superseding the commander in chief in a military operation wouldn’t be a problem or anything.
There are people who believe that this President can only do bad things. So if good things happen they are either 1. not actually good things or 2. not things the President has done. Reality is not their strong suit.
But that’s just what I’m saying. These guys are now coming up with reasons why killing Osama bin Laden was a Bad Thing, simply because it was a Democrat who was in charge of the operation. Could anyone even imagine, about a decade ago, that the Republicans would be in the position of trying to find reasons why we shouldn’t go after Osama bin Laden?
This is the point where we have to suggest that cognitive dissonance has driven these guys literally batshit crazy.
Oh please don’t pretend that the left doesn’t enjoy the birthers. They are so few that they love trotting them on MSNBC to make mainstream conservatives look bad. There was that phony PPP poll that tried to show that a sizable portion of conservatives believe that nonsense. Remember Truthers. You didn’t see the right trying to pin the entire progressive movement with them… And it’s nice you forget that this all started by Hillary Clinton’s camp during the primary in 2008…