Molotov Mitchell's latest WorldNetDaily video is a response to a letter from "Erin, a proud liberal," who wrote him after she "read about you in Huffington Post and seen several of your disgusting videos." It seems that Erin read my HuffPo article on Mitchell, for she repeats a couple claims I made in it rebutting previous Mitchell videos: "Obama's grandmother never said she was born in Kenya," and "the study you used to support your claim that straight people live longer than homosexuals is from the '80s before HIV treatment had been developed."
But ol' Molotov has chosen to respond to Erin, not me. Oh well.
On the former claim: "But Erin, according to Kenyan witnesses, that's exactly what she said. Here's the link, check it out." The link he displayed was to an August 2009 WorldNetDaily article by Jerome Corsi repeating the claims of Ron McRae, a Anabaptist minister who claims Sarah Obama said that during an interview with her. But Corsi doesn't tell the entire story. McRae's claim has been discredited by a translator during the phone call between McRae and Sarah Obama, who pointed out that the grandmother misunderstood the question McRae was asking. Once it was clear to her that McRae was asking if Barack Obama was born in Kenya, she answered in the negative.
Further, McRae is a major Obama-hater, having spread discredited claims and cited "common knowledge" -- not any actual, verifiable facts -- to back up his claim that Obama was born in Kenya.
As to the latter charge, Mitchell first quipped that "I just like everything from the '80s," then scrambled for more evidence: "A study in 2005 confirmed the 20-year life expectancy gap between homosexual men and straight men. Here's the link, check it out." The link goes to the abstract of a study by Paul Cameron, based on obituaries published in a gay newspaper, the Washington Blade. But as the Box Turtle Bulletin points out, that methodology is flawed:
- The Blade doesn't have a general community obituary section. The obituaries they cover are mostly limited to the more well-known members of the local community or prominent national figures. Many gay newspapers do not accept obituaries about just anyone unless they are likely to be known among its readers.
The Southern Poverty Law Center describes Cameron as an "anti-gay propagandist" who "churns out hate literature masquerading as legitimate science. Cameron dresses up his 'studies' with copious footnotes, graphs and charts, and then pays to publish them in certain journals."
Curiously absent from Mitchell's response is any mention of his endorsement of the anti-gay Uganda bill that permits the death penalty for mere homosexuality, which HuffPo highlighted -- and is the main reason Erin would have been aware of Mitchell's rantings in the first place.
Mitchell then delivers a mini-lecture: "Sweet, sweet Erin, I do not despise you, I pity you. You are a victim of public education, liberal mythology, indoctrination. I prescribe that you stop reading the Huffington Post and start reading 'Mere Christianity' by C.S. Lewis, for starters."
Of course Mitchell doesn't want people reading HuffPo -- that's how people learn he's relying on unreliable haters and charlatans to back up his claims. Name-checking C.S. Lewis doesn't change that fact.