“Slowly but surely, this meme is going mainstream,” says Allpundit.
“Did Lou Dobbs really GO THERE? Seriously? This is getting absurd,” says the First Read team at MSNBC.
Six months into his presidency, the charge that Barack Obama is — literally — un-American is gaining not losing steam. Yes, the Birther bump is growing.
Need some backstory? Allow The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder to explain: “Birthers, for the uninitiated, is a term used by the media to ridicule those who believe that the president’s Hawaiian birth certificate is fake and that because he was ostensibly born in Kenya, not the United States, he was never eligible to be president in the first place.”
To the extent that one can conclusively prove such things in our postmodern age, this claim has been extremely thoroughly debunked. The birther movement may be premised on a fictional belief, but it is savvy: birthers now wear the term “birther” as badge of honor, as if they were a persecuted minority — which, come to think of it, is one mechanism for solidarity in the face of evidence to the contrary.
Whether the idea has been debunked or or not is not something that seems to impact the birther movement. In fact, as Dave Weigel points out, “the ‘birther’ movement began in response to Obama’s own efforts to debunk rumors.”
One year ago this week, the presidential campaign of then-Sen. Barack Obama launched FightTheSmears.com, a web site designed to push back against false rumors about the first African-American presidential nominee. To push back against rumors that he was not born in Hawaii, the campaign reproduced a Certificate of Live Birth from the state’s Health Department. Instead of terminating the conspiracy theories, that inspired new theories — that the certificate had been forged or that even if it hadn’t been forged it was the sort of certificate that could be given to someone born outside of the United States. But the certificate is specific about Obama’s birth in Honolulu, down to the 7:24 p.m. time.
Weigel, whose Washington Independent article provides a detailed history of the movement, says “the cottage industry of conspiracy theories about the president’s birth shows no signs of disappearing,” even despite suffering “scores of embarrassing legal defeats, and even after tussles between the attorneys who’ve turned frivolous lawsuits about the president’s citizenship into full-time jobs.”
The theories have found a home in talk radio and on conservative web sites such as Free Republic and WorldNetDaily. Conspiracy theorists are increasingly sending letters to their local papers, embarrassing members of Congress at town hall meetings, and hounding Hill staffers about challenges to the president’s citizenship.
Back at The Atlantic, Ambinder provides his list of “the most prominent birthers”:
Alan Keyes, the former presidential candidate and Obama Senate challenger; Orly Tait, a wonderfully named lawyer from California; Phil Berg, a Democrat; and Michael Reagan, son of Ronald Reagan, and a prominent radio talk show host. This is, at once, a fringe movement and something greater. It’s fringe because no important Republicans believe it, and most are offended by it. It’s greater because some fairly prominent local lawmakers are beginning to sign birther petitions.
No list of prominent anythings that begins with Alan Keyes can be considered a murderer’s row, but lately some of the first-string have been flirting with the idea.
As the First Readers noticed and as James Rainey recounted in The Los Angeles Times, last week, Lou Dobbs fielded a call from a birther — “David from Freeport, N.Y.,” — who was “musing darkly about President Obama ‘rushing all these programs through by whatever means,’ knowing he will soon be exposed as a fake, a fraud, a … Kenyan.”
“Certainly your view can’t be discounted,” Dobbs replied.
On Monday, Rush Limbaugh went further: “Barack Obama has yet to have to prove he’s a citizen. All he’d have to do is show a birth certificate.”
Last night on Larry King, Liz Cheney passed up several chances to “denounce the birthers,” writes Joan Walsh in Salon. Instead, “Cheney demurred, telling King the Birther movement exists because “People are uncomfortable with a president who is reluctant to defend the nation overseas.’ ”
Also on his show, Larry King played the viral video that is partly responsible for fueling the current boomlet. In it, a birther challenges Rep. Mike Castle, a Delaware Republican, at a town-hall meeting that took place last week.
“What’s most notable, to me, at least,” says Ambinder, “is not how scared Castle looked or how passionately the woman argued for Barack Obama’s foreign birth. It was the reaction of the audience, a good portion of which erupted into cheers and youbetchas.”
“The real story in all of this,” say MSNBC’s First Readers: “is that Republican Party has a HUGE problem with its base right now.”
That some Republicans believe a man who won last year’s presidential contest by seven percentage points is not the legitimate president is a base problem much bigger than Cindy Sheehan anti-war protestors or black helicopter conspiracy theorists who flock to some Ron Paul events. Check out how flummoxed Castle looked. How many other Republican elected officials are dealing with questioners like this woman?
Another way to put that last question is, How many Republican officials are dealing with questioners like this woman who are members of Congress? The answer seems to be at least 10, since that’s the number of G.O.P. representatives who have signed on to sponsor a bill, calls for future presidential candidates to provide a birth certificate.
One of the cosponsors, Rep. John Campbell, appeared on Chris Matthews yesterday, which yielded another video now making the rounds.
Watching this, Ben Smith at Politico applauds Matthews for “pressing the backers of legislation like this, which can be seen as a nod and a wink at a movement which, at its core, is about the irrational belief that Obama isn’t the legitimate president.” And he seems worried about things bigger than the Republican Party. “That is, quite literally, a dangerous belief to encourage.”
Jon Hennke, who blogs at the Next Right, thinks this is all much ado about nothing: “Why did the media and the Left suddenly decide that a few Birthers are The Most Important Cranks In America? How is this fringe important?”
But other conservative observers disagree. Ambinder again: “Republicans have to be extra careful. If they give credence to the birthers, they’re (not only advancing ignorance but also) betraying the narrowness of their base. If they dismiss this growing movement, they might drive birthers to find more extreme candidates, which will fragment a Republican political coalition.”
Allahpundit says the focus on the birther issue is foolish, “given how it distracts from the momentum conservatives are building against ObamaCare.”
At Whiskey Fire, Blogger Thers says the birthers don’t so much represent a problem for the G.O.P., as they simply represent the G.O.P. “This class of stuff has been the meat and potatoes for large chunks of the G.O.P. base forever; indeed, these people are the most reliable G.O.P. voters.”
Have the 1990s vanished so quickly from memory? Has Hillary Clinton’s murder of Vince Foster, shooting him in the head with a lesbian bullet, been so completely forgotten? . . .
The birther madness is a minor, entirely predictable symptom of what the G.O.P. is. Indeed, compared to the climate change guff, the birther mania is downright benign. …
The G.O.P. lets James Inhofe talk about science. In public. And the “MSM” is cool with that. And so is the rest of the Republican party.
What’s a little birth certificate tomfoolery next to that? You know?
Update 7:17 PM.
1. This post as originally published said that Lynn Cheney appeared on Larry King last night. It was her daughter, Liz Cheney.
2. Pareene at Gawker published a detailed post about the Birther movement this afternoon.
3. Also this afternoon, Dave Weigel posted a Birther video that was shot at the end of June, of three Birthers who “walked around Washington handing their documents to members of Congress, cops, the White House, the FBI, and anyone else who looked like an authority figure. . . . The soundtrack is ‘Right Now’ by Van Halen.”
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Eric Etheridge, New York Times
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Full article: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/22/birther-boom/
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See also:
Should The GOP Take The Birther Threat Seriously? Rush Does….
That’s the thesis of the First Readers of NBC News, after viewing this astonishing clip from a town hall meeting that Rep. Mike Castle held in Delaware for his constituents. What’s most notable, to me, at least, is not how scared Castle looked or how passionately the woman argued for Barack Obama’s foreign birth. It was the reaction of the audience, a good portion of which erupted into cheers and youbetchas. Birthers, for the uninitiated, is a term used by the media to ridicule those who believe that the president’s Hawaiian birth certificate is fake and that because he was ostensibly born in Kenya, not the United States, he was never eligible to be president in the first place. To the extent that one can conclusively prove such things in our postmodern age, this claim has been extremely thoroughly debunked. The birther movement may be premised on a fictional belief, but it is savvy: birthers now wear the term “birther” as badge of honor, as if they were a persecuted minority — which, come to think of it, is one mechanism for solidarity in the face of evidence to the contrary. (“Hitler had the “Untermenschen,” Pol Pot had the “Intelligentsia,” and now Obama has the “Birther.”) The most prominent birthers are Alan Keyes, the former presidential candidate and Obama Senate challenger; Orly Tait, a wonderfully named lawyer from California; Phil Berg, a Democrat; and Michael Reagan, son of Ronald Reagan, and a prominent radio talk show host. This is, at once, a fringe movement and something greater. It’s fringe because no important Republicans believe it, and most are offended by it. It’s greater because some fairly prominent local lawmakers are beginning to sign birther petitions.
At least nine members of Congress have cosponsored a birther bill that would require prospective presidents to affirm their U.S. citizenship. What we don’t know is how widespread the belief is among Republicans — and even if the belief is confined to a narrow minority, whether the belief will spread as Republicans begin to pay closer attention to electoral politics in 2010 and 2012. In the same way that Democrats in 2004 always got a stolen election question (which, to be fair, was at least closer to reality than the birther’s claims), Republican presidential candidates need to figure out how to diffuse angry birthers who are bound to show up and demand their attention. …. The buried lede to this post: Rush Limbaugh claimed today that Obama “has yet to prove that he’s a citizen.” Republicans have to be extra careful. If they give credence to the birthers, they’re (not only advancing ignorance but also) betraying the narrowness of their base. If they dismiss this growing movement, they might drive birthers to find more extreme candidates, which will fragment a Republican political coalition.
Marc Ambinder, The Atlantic
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See also MSNBC video: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/32091472#32091472
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Full article: http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/07/should_the_gop_take_the_birthers_seriously_rush_does.php
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See also:
On Television and Radio, Talk of Obama’s Citizenship
The conspiracy theorists who have claimed for more than a year that President Obama is not a United States citizen have found receptive ears among some mainstream media figures in recent weeks.
Despite ample evidence to the contrary, the country’s most popular talk radio host, Rush Limbaugh, told his listeners Tuesday that Mr. Obama “has yet to have to prove that he’s a citizen.” Lou Dobbs of CNN said that Mr. Obama should do more to dispel the claims. Larry King, also of CNN, asked guests about it, and other media types, including the MSNBC hosts Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow, merrily mocked the controversy. NBC News even did a segment on the subject.
Cable news is often stretched for news in the summertime, but the birth certificate case has been fueled by the combustible combination of luck, compelling video, an outlandish topic, and savvy activists.
Advocates of the issue, who are sometimes called birthers, have succeeded in calling attention to themselves through frequent calls to talk radio shows, e-mail messages to news organizations and a videotaped question at a Congressional town hall. The Associated Press said that Mr. Obama’s citizenship status had been one of the most popular topics for the wire service’s “Ask AP” column.
Mr. Dobbs, who also hosts a daily radio show, said on CNN that he is “getting calls now. Often.”
The conspiracy theory that Mr. Obama was born in Kenya, his father’s home, first took root among some elements of the right wing last year. In response, the Obama campaign scanned the candidate’s “certification of live birth” from Hawaii’s department of health and published it on the Internet. It confirms that Mr. Obama was born in Honolulu on Aug. 4, 1961. Numerous third parties have examined the birth certificate and concluded, as the Annenberg Center’s nonpartisan FactCheck.org Web site did last year, that it “meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship.”
In an e-mail message to Mr. Dobbs’ producers on Thursday, Jon Klein, the president of CNN/U.S., wrote that “it seems this story is dead — because anyone who still is not convinced doesn’t really have a legitimate beef.”
In an interview Friday, Mr. Klein said the e-mail message should not be interpreted as an order to stop debating the subject. He defended Mr. Dobbs’ broadcast, saying that “what we do here all the time is dig into the truth about all kinds of controversial issues.”
“This smear was thoroughly debunked during the election,” said Eric Burns, the president of Media Matters for America, a liberal media monitoring organization.
Remarkably, there is even a reference to Mr. Obama’s birth in the “Births, Marriages, Deaths” column of The Honolulu Advertiser newspaper on Aug. 13, 1961. Still, the claims about Mr. Obama’s citizenship persist among a small but vocal group, essentially portraying Mr. Obama as a foreigner who has managed to conceal his origins for nearly five decades.
“It’s racist,” said Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC. “It’s racist. Just call it for what it is.”
Mr. Griffin said the cable news coverage was set off by two back-to-back events: the introduction of a bill that would require presidential candidates to provide a copy of their original birth certificate (it has nine co-sponsors in the House and one in the Senate) and the video of a town hall held by a Republican Congressman that turned into a hearing on Mr. Obama’s citizenship.
At the town hall in late June, the Congressman, Mike Castle of Delaware, was angrily questioned by a woman who said of Obama, “he is not an American citizen, he is a citizen of Kenya.” Members of the crowd applauded approvingly, and Mr. Castle was heckled when he said Mr. Obama was indeed a U.S. citizen. Video of the confrontation was uploaded to YouTube on July 10. It took more than a week for the incident to receive widespread attention.
Mr. Griffin said the claims are legitimate to cover “in that there’s a segment of our population that believes this and keeps bringing it up.”
A number of MSNBC shows have covered the birthers’ claims in recent days, mostly in mocking tones. On “Hardball” Thursday evening, the radio talk show host G. Gordon Liddy asserted that Mr. Obama may be an “illegal alien,” leading the host Chris Matthews to hand Mr. Liddy a photocopy of the birth certificate.
The subject has percolated on the Internet and on right-wing radio talk shows for months. The founder of WorldNetDaily, a conservative Web site, has taken to buying billboards that ask “Where’s the birth certificate?”
But from more mainstream outlets, “the coverage has been minuscule” until this month, said Philip J. Berg, a lawyer who has challenged Mr. Obama’s citizenship in a number of lawsuits, unsuccessfully to date. Since the town hall meeting, “there’s been a vast uptick.”
He added: “If I could file a lawsuit against the national media, including The New York Times, I would do that, because I think you’ve all done an injustice by not covering Obama.”
Since mid-July Mr. Dobbs has discussed it repeatedly on his radio show and on TV, leading Media Matters to accuse him of “legitimizing baseless conspiracy theories.” Last week CNN said it investigated the claims, and a guest host on Mr. Dobbs’ own show concluded that it “found no basis for the questions about the president’s birthplace.”
Mr. Dobbs has said he believes Mr. Obama is a citizen, but he brought up the controversy repeatedly this week, wondering in particular why Mr. Obama has not provided a copy of his birth certificate so that “all of this nonsense goes away.” He apparently answered his own question Thursday evening, telling viewers that “Hawaii says it can’t release a paper copy of the president’s original birth certificate because they say the state government discarded the original document when the health department records went electronic some eight years ago.”
The Fox News Channel, with its deep bench of conservative hosts, has not addressed the controversy this week. But the message boards on its conservative forum The Fox Nation have thousands of comments about the birth certificate issue, including some that call Mr. Obama “the Kenyan candidate.”
A lot of journalists “live with this issue; we get e-mails, we get asked about it,” Brian Williams, the anchor of the “NBC Nightly News,” said on Wednesday’s broadcast.
He showed an excerpt from the YouTube video in a segment about the birthers that he said were “spreading lies” about Mr. Obama.
“So many conspiracy theories, so little time,” he concluded.
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Full article: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/on-television-and-radio-talk-of-obamas-citizenship/?hp
