Sunday, May 01, 2011

Obama's Birth Certificate Release Won't Change Birthers' Minds

By MARC McDONALD

Conventional wisdom has it that President Obama's recent decision to release the long-form version of his birth certificate will finally silence the birther crowd. After all, these are the same people who've been clamoring for years for Obama to release the long-form certificate.

However, conventional wisdom in this case is wrong. It assumes that the birthers are reasonable people, who think logically and aren't blinded by irrational hatred.

Have you ever tried to argue with a birther? If so, you'll know that these aren't reasonable people. They simply can't be reached. They suffer from what Bill Maher has described as a "cone of silence" that acts as a shield to prevent factual info from entering their brains.

These people harbor a white-hot, intense hatred for Obama. They don't care about the facts. Rush and Fox News have told them that Obama is the source of all their woes. The fact that these people are racists just intensifies their hatred of our nation's first African-American president. You'd sooner persuade a KKK member to donate to the NAACP.

I don't expect the birther controversy to go away. Fox News and HateWing radio are already spinning the story to sow doubts. Last week, Fox News ran an analysis by an "expert," who concluded that the recently released long-form certificate shows signs of being Photoshopped.

If you need any more evidence that the birther conspiracy story is alive and well, consider this: Jerome Corsi's upcoming book, Where's the Birth Certificate?: The Case that Barack Obama is not Eligible to be President already ranks 44th on Amazon.com's Top Bestsellers list. The book is scheduled for release on May 17. No doubt, it will sell truckloads, fueled by the hatemongers on wingnut radio.

Birthers are like all wingnuts in that they exist in their own information bubble. They never get viewpoints outside of those presented by the likes of Limbaugh and Fox News. While the birther "controversy" has been a complete non-issue for non-wingnuts for years, it's still an article of faith among the HateWing radio/Fox News crowd.

These are the same people who fiercely reject the idea that Global Warming is real (while the rest of the world as long accepted it as the documented science that it is). In fact, these are the same people who continue to believe that Bill Clinton was somehow connected to the "murder" of Vince Foster.

Foster died 18 years ago. Yet right-wing kooks continue to sow doubts about his death. I expect the birther "controversy" will continue at least as long.

3 comments:

Jack Jodell said...

Marc,
You're right---these people are insane and will never be convinced. But, after last night's killing of bin Laden, I think it won't matter anymore. I think all of these paranoid far right crazies will be discredited and repudiated, and all this crazy talk about Obama being a Muslim, not "one of us", and being soft on (and "palling with") terrorists will be thoroughly rejected by all but a small band of the criminally insane.

Take THAT, Liz and Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin, and all the rest of the severely deluded far right! Obama succeeded where Bush and Cheney miserably failed!

Montasa said...

Our president had already showed his US passport to;

1. Get a Passport;
http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2008/03/20/obamas_passport_files_hacked/

2. Become a US Senator;

I feel sorry for all the little Birthers, It’s not their fault; it’s your families’ fault that taught you that you were better than other people based on race, creed ethnicity, color, nationality or sex, in short they engrained in you their hate (what a legacy).

But you know at some point you need to grow up and act like an adult and think for yourself and distinguish what is true and what is BS.

But there is where the little Birthers find yourself because we all know it was never about a birth certificate or grades, because we all know you want to go around wearing white sheets, burn crosses and hang people who are not like you, we know that your growth is stunted in your hate, and hate is what this is all about, you will never win anymore, and I feel sorry for all of you. I can only imagine when our President is re-elected what you phonies will lie about next. Oh, and just know, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and sounds like a duck, it’s a duck, the little Birthers are a bunch of racists!

Marc McDonald said...

Hi Montasa, thanks for your comment. You know, sometimes I think I actually have MORE respect for the overt racists in our society than the sneaky talk radio types who spend all their time carefully dancing around the "N" word.
If you're gonna be a racist, be a f*cking racist. Go ahead and put on the white KKK sheet. Burn a few crosses. Use the "N" word frequently. Be honest and upfront about it.
Don't do as cowards like Limbaugh do and artfully dance around the "N" word and then try to claim you're not really a racist.