Now that the froth is firmly in your mind, we can examine it.
First and foremost is that the birth certificate is dated 1961. Sort of has to be, since that was the year of our President’s birth. Unfortunately for the Birthers, it’s also a few years before Kenya was established as a nation. Let’s not forget that there were two birth announcements in separate papers, and in order for there to have been this massive conspiracy, folks would have had to have thought for near half a century in advance to prepare the way. Which, isn’t too far off from the latest theory from WND.
Oops.
I would link directly to Attorney Taitz site, but as Little Green Footballs notes, the site is chock full of malware.
Which oddly enough, if anyone paid any attention to the Hillaryis44 brouhahaha, seems to be a pattern for kook sites who prey on the gullible and poorly socially adjusted. Hook them with a great story, and hope that they are so fired up with outrage, that the rubes miss that they’re racking up some revenue for folks who have no compunctions about using donations, and just plain grift to line their nests.
There is a certain poetic justice for the malcontents to be taken advantage of, and if it is the Idiot Brigade being fleeced, I don’t mind so much; keeping them focused on this issue keeps them focused on the shiny object in front of them, and less able and less funded to pursue more damaging and more dangerous pursuits.
The problem being, is that this tempest in a teapot is NOT a true conspiracy theory. It is very much a manufactured sort of protest, and driven by needs to generate hits for sites that are promoting it. WND is not just invested in this as a story, it is now its lifeblood, with trying to raise money and awareness. Were Joseph Farah funding his witch hunt with his own money, I might think he was just a kook with a chip on his shoulder–and one that is seen as useful to a GOP leadership that needs to keep flinging mud to cover the sad fact that they have no idea how to come up with a health care plan that is even remotely palatable, no real vision with foreign policy, save that we keep yelling at and shooting brown people, and is increasingly leery of its own membership, but bound by a Devil’s Bargain and their cash.
It is useful to some, but only in that pretty much most folks realize that it’s NOT a real conspiracy. Not those who report it–Lou Dobbs not withstanding, save that he wants to appeal to a demographic that astounds me with its ignorance and deep seated rage–not those who enjoy the Schadenfreude of watching Democrats roll their eyes, and certainly not the folks who are busy trying to profit from it.
Representative Eric Cantor has his own spin: that the “controversy” is a Liberal plot. Which offends me to my core, not because I lurve the Huffington Post or other Liberal causes, but because it is such a shameless spin that it shames me to have to share a party with this oaf–because he undermines the integrity of the party with this idiocy.
Birthers share some ground with the Truthers. A disregard for facts and proof, a disregard for anything looking like reason, and more importantly, a misplaced sense of patriotism, that somehow instantly equates their cause to be the dividing line between sheep and “real thinking Americans.” Which, perhaps it does, with the problem being that Birthers don’t realize which end of the scale that they’re on.
Normally, I don’t mind conspiracies. I collect them like baseball cards. Kennedy’s assassination. Bob Marley’s cancer was deliberate. The Moon Hoax. There are so many that it is fun to connect the dots and create a paranoid world of nested interests who wall off “the truth” from the uninitiated and separate out those in the know, and the gullible herd. It’s attractive to think yourself above the herd, especially with secret knowledge that you can proclaim from the rooftops to show your superiority; especially in the face of growing evidence that your influence and your agenda is falling to the side. Conspiracies make the world a far more interesting place–even in the Chinese curse sense of the term–and reinforce the idea that some folks just won’t open their eyes. My problem with this particular theory, is that it’s far from an organic sort of conspiracy. It is entirely manufactured, and worse, so ludicrous that it makes the ravings of the the John Birch Society seem tame and reasoned. It offends me, not because it gulls idiots, but because it is so blatant and crafted.
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