White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs got it right when he bluntly said that the legions who are adamant that President Obama is an illegal alien and should be dumped from the White House will never go away. Not only won't they go away but in recent weeks they've gained even more steam, and they've gained it, ironically, with the unintended help of birther opponents. Every newspaper, magazine, talk show host that damns the birthers as a bunch of wacky, paranoid, Obama-haters stirs the pot even more. They do it simply by acknowledging the issue with a column or a show. The birthers revel in that, and they should because there's a canny, calculated,and politically cynical motive behind their Obama birth certificate agitation.
The clamor for Obama to produce his original birth document gained a noisy following long before the final presidential vote tally was in last November. It started the instant that he declared his presidential candidacy in February 2007. Take your pick: He was too black. He was not patriotic enough. He was too liberal, too effete, too untested. He was a Muslim, terrorist fellow traveler, and a closet black radical. The shock of an Obama in the White House was simply too much for many to bear. Obama defied the stereotypical textbook look and definition of what an American president was supposed to look like, and be like; namely a wooden image middle-aged, or older, white male.
Obama inadvertently gave ammunition to the incipient birthers during a campaign stop in late July 2007 when he quipped that he did not look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills. Obama got torched for saying the obvious and that was that his candidacy was different. Obama later admitted that it was a racial reference. The off the cuff remark simply reinforced the point that he and his candidacy marked a turning point in U.S. presidential politics and by extension race relations.
The Obama birth certificate hounders kicked their rumor mongering campaign against him into even higher gear when some mainstream papers found the birth certificate controversy good copy and grist to get the tongues wagging. The birthers spotted the opening and crudely cloaked themselves in the mantle of public spirited citizens and legal experts with no personal, political, let alone racial, ax to grind with Obama. Their sole goal they claimed was to insure electoral truth and accuracy, to make sure that all the legal requirements for holding a presidential office are met, and to head off a constitutional crisis. They even promised that they would put the matter to rest if Obama simply produced the original.
That was a lie. The birthers with an open boost from GOP ultra conservatives led by House Rep John Campbell and other House members who are pushing a bill that requires all future presidential candidates to produce their original birth certificates. That, of course, would apply to Obama as well when he presumably runs for reelection in 2012. The real value of the Birther movement is that it's a tailored back door movement that can be used to destabilize, or at the least keep the Obama administration off balance on policy initiatives he's pushing on health care, the economy, and a softer foreign policy outreach. They are fierce opponents of them.
Since Obama's inauguration dozens of YouTube clips have been churned out on the controversy, legions of websites continue to recycle the rumor line about his certificate, and a mountain size stack of articles rehash the issue of whether the birth certificate that Hawaii produced is legit. More than two dozen lawsuits or petitions have been filed in various state courts contesting Obama's U.S. citizenship (one of them was filed by political gadfly Alan Keyes). The Supreme's Court's refusal to demand that Obama pony up his birth certificate has done absolutely nothing to take any steam out of the movement. If anything, it probably added some vapor to it, by convincing more that the Courts or in cahoots with the Obama White House to keep the real "truth" about his imagined foreign birth secret from the American people.
The worst thing about the controversy over Obama's birth certificate is not that CNN's Lou Dobbs has latched onto the issue for ratings and to make mischief against Obama. Or that others in the media have even dignified the controversy by treating it as if it's a legitimate issue. The worst thing is that none have connected the dots and seen the birthers as the shock troops to torpedo Obama's political agenda. Their hope is that by sowing enough conspiracy paranoia about him they can do just that.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, "The Hutchinson Report" can be heard on weekly in Los Angeles at 9:30 AM Fridays on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and live streamed nationally on ktym.com
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It also reviews the 'certifica
I say let these people howl and hoot openly. Let these nutcases hijack the entire Republican Party and turn it into a laughingst
Then again, I believe we're seeing a meltdown of lunatic self-right
http://pal
Meaning what???, that by the Democrats having a winning Presidenti
Where an important legal issue is involved in litigation
Which hospital was Obama born in? Who was the attending physician? Who was listed as the father?
I suspect that since the state of Hawaii has the original birth certificat
It would be brilliant political move for Obama to feed out rope to the "birthers" until they are foaming at the mouth and then reveal the birth certificat
Earl you are so right. I connected the dots a long time ago and watched in amazement that it snowballed into what it is now. Incredible
F'en @ssholes the entire lot of'em!!!
They're trying to swift boat him, but I think they'll much less success. They'll succeed with the fringe that was bound to fear and hate Obama anyway, and they'll fail with everyone else.
The people who want a reason to hate the president will find this reason effective. They're the only ones who will. The nation has moved on, and Obama is a far more effective politician and a far more likeable man than John Kerry was. Both of those factors will add up to a firewall.
you mean the Democrats and Phil Berg....yo
As a white male this probable fact and the truth of what you wrote here disturbs me greatly! Ed Schultz, on his radio program, finally said what really needed to be said "The true bottom line in all of this complete opposition to anything President Obama tries to accomplish
That group refuses to accept this reality and led by the Hannity, Limbaugh, Beck and all their bigoted confederat
The frightenin
Their rallying cries have gone from "Obama's policies and agenda must be stopped and he must fail" to simply "Obama must be stopped"! This should disturb and frighten every sensible American, as President Obama is being portrayed as the "evil black boogeyman intent on destroying our nation"! It most definitely appears that Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, and their associates actually WANT to see race and culture wars in our nation as they fan the flames of hatred, intoleranc
What they most obviously mean is that just as was expected of children in past eras, they want minorities or non-whites to go back to the "children (and minorities
Well that's NOT going to be the case EVER AGAIN and many are in a complete panic filled frenzy!
These are dangerous and volatile times and for Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, and many GOP legislator
I am concerned about how the birthers will try to use the issue to deligitimi
The question I ask in an attempt to netralize local birthers is: Why did no one ask to see or have produced the BC of any other recent president, only this one? Their typical reply is "Because there is a question surroundin
I think the REAL strategy of the birthers is to create a fake constituti
Too many liberals, especially here on HufPo, think snarky, snide comments are all that's needed when dealing with these crackpots.
Maybe they are too young to remember a lone congressma
The liberals laughed then, too.
as has been pointed out the other side needs to start pushing back against this bigoted, racist hate-talk
and call it what it is...blata
I wish everytime some calls Obama black or AA, someone would immeditale
The GOP will be culpable and accountabl
if you look at their websites they claim BOTH parents need to be american citizens. actually in some cases that both parents have to be natural born american citizensal
what has been rarely reported is their lawsuits call to overturn the definition of natural born american citizen which has been basically the same since 1794. this definition has been upheld in supreme court cases. they are calling for those decisions to be overturned
talk about wanting activist judges who make laws from the bench.
Your daughter is still, technicall
I was back in the world for two years when I learned the truth about the Gulf of Tonkin and knew that Uncle Sam had lied to me. Don't get too comfortabl