--Bill Maher
"Now everybody do the propaganda, and sing along to the age of paranoia."
--Green Day
In the year 1915, The film "Birth of a Nation" was released. Widely recognized as the first ever "Blockbuster" movie, the film was innovative in many ways especially the use of new camera angles and narrative technique. It even earned a place in The American Film Institute's "100 years...100 movies list" coming in at number 44.
However, the film has been widely controversial over the years for it's racial themes and positive portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan. This is one of the film's narrative slides, quoting President Woodrow Wilson:
"The White Men were roused by a mere instinct of self preservation...."
Does this sound like anything that's going on right now? Sure it does, it sounds like the radical birther movement.
If you've been living under a rock and don't know what the birthers are, well they're a bunch of total idiots who espouse a conspiracy theory that President Obama was born in Kenya, not Hawaii, and is therefore not eligible to be president.
The radical right wing has latched onto this and will not let go, even though the mainstream conservatives even disagree with them. Hell even Glenn Beck thinks this is crazy, and when Glenn Beck thinks you're crazy, well, you get my drift.
Well, the birthers have been gaining some steam over the last few months, and just last week they finally thought they had their hands on the smoking gun. Queen Birther Orly Taitz (Lawyer/Dentist/Real Estate agent) got her hands on AN ACTUAL KENYAN BIRTH CERTIFICATE WITH BARACK OBAMA'S NAME ON IT.
The whackos blew their collective loads over this. This was it! They had him! Even the right wing weirdo site World Net Daily (Ground Zero for the birthers) put it up on their website. You can see it here
Looks pretty good, yeah? Even looks like it's been printed on...acid...free...computer..paper?? Man I'm impressed with Kenya. I didn't know they had such things in the 1960s.
Well, the whole thing fell apart rather quickly. I'm not going into all the things wrong with it, but here's a link to a few. Now we've also found out that the source of the fake was an actual Australian birth certificate. You can see both of them here and see for yourself.
Folks, Super Dental Lawyer Orly Taitz actually presented this in court against the President. That is how absolutely stupid these people are. Normally I don't believe in name calling, but that's only thing to call this: stupid.
Want to see Obama's real birth certificate? Ok here ya go. Need some more verification? Here.
So now that we have all that out of the way, let's press on to more important questions. Why do the birthers do this? What is the driving force behind the movement? Do people really believe this?
Yes, people really buy into this, and they continue to believe it despite the fact that there is indisputable evidence to the contrary. I'm sorry, if you're one of these people, you are a grade A idiot. This is about on par with believing the world is flat or that Bush orchestrated the 9/11 attacks.
However, I suspect that most of the people actually pushing this don't really buy it either, Ultra Legal Dental Girl Orly excepted of course. They see it as a way to distract from the real problems facing our country. I don't think that it's a coincidence that this really started to ratchet up at the same time as the health care debate. If these GOPers can drum up enough hatred with the rank and file Idiot Tools of the right, they might get enough misguided outrage to derail Health Care now and the rest of the President's agenda later.
Most disturbing to me though is that so many everyday people seem to be buying it. Everyday white people. There is a strong under current of racial fear here, and the hardcore right is channeling it, telling these people that their way of life is being destroyed by a Negro from Kenya. Yes people buy into that. Sounds the like the Wilson quote in "Birth of a Nation." We saw the racial violence explode from Reconstruction on to the present day. Can it explode again? I bet it can. The idiots who believe this own a lot of guns, and that's scary. This is dangerous. I wonder if the Republicans realize that?
Well at any rate, you all keep looking for a Kenyan birth certificate and we'll keep making laws and fixing the country. You're welcome.
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