After several years of silliness the President has released his long form birth certificate, putting to rest (but probably not really, as today’s poll suggests) the rumors that he was not born a US citizen and thus is not eligible for the office of President. I’ve been fortunate enough not to know any birthers personally, but I’m curious if anyone reading this post had to deal with any.
Meantime, enjoy my Matsby-esque MSPaint tribute to the death of a conspiracy movement.
That’s pretty sweet Blair.
The best part of that painting is the guy so busy on his iPhone that he can’t spare the time to look up at the document. Was that in the original? It probably says something about my life that it would probably be me who’d get an important call right then.
Much like.
I’ve had to deal with it personally only from two people who actually know better. You can tell they feel a little sheepish championing birtherism, but they hate Obama so deeply that they are willing to prostitute their own better judgment to make common cause with others who hate him as badly.
Yeah, what Ardis said about accurately describes my experience.
Interesting choice of a picture given that old John McNought’n posted this the other day:
http://blog.mcnaughtonart.com/2011/04/byu-censors-artwork-for-being-too.html
The comments are classic – none related to birtherism, but some in the same class of nuttery (apologies for threadjacking but the coincidence was too good not to mention).
Edited the pic to add Trump to the mix.
Casey, I saw that the other day and was a bit…disturbed by many of the comments. 😉
Trump looks like a werewolf standing there. Love it!
OMG! This morning a brother of mine posted this *deep* analysis of the birth certificate proving that it has been tampered with. And he’s only BARELY Mormon. Out of 8 kids there are 4 of us no longer LDS but they are all still batshit crazy conservative. HELP!
Awesome.
dadsprimal, your poor soul, and may God have mercy on it!
Just finished reading the psychology classic, When Prophecy Fails by Leon Festinger, et al. I find it adequately describes the kind of cognitive dissonance the “birther movement” is going through in the face of significant disconfirmation via the release of the long-form birth certificate. On a side note, I’m amused how birtherites picked up steam among conservatives when it was an influential Hillary supporter that launched the legal debate over Obama’s place of birth. It was always a non issue for me because of how I read the natural citizen clause: the language suggests that the natural citizen requirement to occupy the presidency applied only to the first generation of American statesmen. Now that we have Congressional and legal precedent for citizenship requirements, it seems constitutional to me for any American citizen to be capable of being president.
Blair, you are the man.
Oh, one more thing, Blair: it’s likely the release of the birth certificate will only produce more active proselytizers for the birtherites. So while I wish for the death of this conspiracy movement, and while I applaud Obama for not trying to leverage (very much) the situation for political advantage, I have this creeping suspicion that they’ll just find new twisted theories to maintain that Obama is foreign-born, or not a natural citizen. They’ll probably go the route of claiming he forfeited his citizenship when he lived in Indonesia, and never regained it upon return to the States. blah blah.
Awesome job, Blair!
Awesome Blair.
Matsby, my skillz don’t compare to yours, my brother.
Dave, you’re right, there will still be some people not willing to accept the President as a legitimate citizen and thus president. It’s sad because it means they aren’t capable or willing to look at policies and decisions in order to criticize, but fall back on a conspiracy theory to which they can always posit counter-evidence.
The sheer idiocy of the Birthers about the subject amazes me as just by having his mother be a citizen of the United States, Obama was a natural born citizen. One parent could be from Country A and the child was born in country C, the child would be a US citizen if the other parent is an American citizen. Essentially anyone who does not have to go through a naturalization process is a natural born citizen.
The first Romney to run for the Presidency was born in Mexico and no one yelled about him not being an American citizen. George Romney’s mistake about saying he was “brainwashed” concerning the Viet Nam War unfortunately finished him as a contender for the Republican nomination in 1968. The country lost out, as both Romney and Humphrey were very good men We can’t quite say the same for Richard Milhaus Nixon.
I just looked up the original version of the painting.
Wow. Just…Wow.
I kind of want to hang it on my wall so that i can throw darts at it.
But anyway, on the topic of your post…Yeah, we’ve got birthers amongst us. The frustrating thing is that they tend to put their comments into code words (when they’re around me, at least)—and you can’t really pin someone down on code words, hence their perverse power.
secret combinations?
Yep, we know some birthers. DH got into an argument with them about a month ago. He exasperatedly asked one of them if she would be satisfied if the long form birth certificate were released. She paused and said, grudgingly, “I would *accept* it.” well, how big of you.
I made this for my husband last night to amuse him:
http://i1195.photobucket.com/albums/aa395/xenologue/nowshutit.jpg
Awesome picture Blair. Not even if Jesus himself said Barack Obama was born in the United States would it satiate the hate birthers have of Obama.
Someone needs to tall that little boy to untuck that polo shirt. He’s not even wearing a belt for Pete’s sake.
I have many relatives who are/were “birthers.” As soon as the birth certificate was released, they started posting (on FB) about the Obama’s Connecticut social security number. It’s an old story, but now it’s all they’ve got.
(Well, actually, it’s not all: the next day they started questioning the authenticity of the document.)
“Someone needs to tall that little boy to untuck that polo shirt.”
Anarchist.
Yes, there are several birthers in my family. To them, the biggest hang up was why did the Pres. not release the long form. I had previously theorized that there was some embarrassing info on the long form, but that there was not any lack of evidence about him being born in Hawaii. I think that I dislike Obama as much as they do, but elections come around often enough to change things so that I did not get very worked up. Has anyone every used the scripture “from the mouth of 2 or 3 witnesses…”?
Well done, sir!
BHodges,
I am offended that you would photoshop Eric Bana’s face in place of Jesus’ face. Know you no respect for… Oh, wait. I see the Trump thing… my bad. Sorry.
Ugh. That horrid painting.
What is frightening is how many think it is inspired, inspirational, insightful, etc.
I find it unbelievably offensive to associate the Savior with one particular political viewpoint.
Frighteningly, the KSL poll frightened me.
http://www.ksl.com/?nid=157&sid=15056010
Better than the original! That’s the only way the birther ‘controversy’ would ever end, unless…
What happens when people ask for HIS birth certificate and find out not only that he doesn’t have one, but that it appears He was born in the Middle East?
Will BYU sell this version?
Yes, I do have a few birther friends and family. I don’t think they’re giving up either.
We have two hard-core birthers (and I use the term in with its full derogatory sense) in our ward who are firmly convinced the latest document is a fraud, and that Obama is not a U.S. citizen. One of them, who I home-teach, believes Obama is “probably the Anti-Christ”.
Both are on permanent disability and SSI. One has severe PTSD, the other is a full-blown schizophrenic. Both have paranoid delusions independent of their politics. (e.g., the Stake President is dealing drugs, the High Priest Group Leader is attempting to steal his identity.)
I do not believe these individuals are typical of conservative republicans, but they are out there.
Actually McNaughton himself is a certified birther. Check out this previous post on his blog, “What Did Obama Do That Is Unconstitutional?”
Among the litany of complaints (bomb Libya, “Obamacare”) is “8. There are still many unanswered questions regarding the existence of a valid birth certificate. Why can’t you simply provide such documentation and put all questions to rest?”
What I found interesting in the largely supportive commenters on the artist’s blog is how many of them don’t see the painting as having any political message. And I had to laugh at the suggestions that BYU is going liberal.
I’m with Glenn Beck. He has said for some time tht he feels that Obama is a citizen and was born in Hawaii, because it streaches credulity to think that this conspirecy was started before Obama was born.
I personally believe that Obama wanted this issue to last as long as possible because it was a red herring to distract people from his failure as a president (economy, oil drilling, wars, Gitmo, etc.).
I agree with Kramer…we should blame Obama, even for the nasty racist rumor about him.
C’mon Chris, you don’t think Obama held out on this for while just to flush out doofuses like Trump? (And make other opponents, like O’Reilly, back down in front of their fans?)
Not that that’s exactly what openly-admits-to-being-with-Glenn-Beck Kramer was saying….
Right Steve,
Because no liberal has ever mentioned Christian ideals for their stance on “charity” (actually, the forced redistribution of wealth), anti-death penalty (actually pro-not punishing murderers), or anything. It’s only conservatives that think “Jesus is on their side.”
psychochemiker/NOYDMB/madchemist/liberalslayer,
You once told me that Mormon liberals like me were the reason you did not go to church anymore. While I sense that you have returned to activity in the church (good for you), is there anything I could do to get you to no longer come to my blog?
Ruh roh, time to call this thread quits!
What? I am just getting started. 🙂
Up until the point that Trump went after the “birther” issue, the only people that I knew who brought up the issue were supporters of the President and the President himself. I’m sure that there were a few out there clinging to the issue, but this and the “he’s a Muslim” issue were kept alive more by the constant repeated denials of it.
It seemed much more common for Democrats to ask “Why don’t Republicans believe he is a citizen or a Christian” than it was for Republicans to bring it up. They (Republicans) were much more worried about his policies than the “Birther” issue.
I agree with post 36 insofar as to say that there was a political advantage for the Democrats to keep the issue alive. By constantly linking the Republicans and the Tea Partiers with the few idiot birthers out there, they were making the Republicans/Tea Party look stupid by association.
“…the only people that I knew who brought up the issue were supporters of the President…”
I think you experienced a very unique sample.
It seems that Jon McNaughton is becoming to the Bloggernacle what Justin Bieber is to YouTube video comments.