The birther conspiracy theory was once one of the biggest conspiracy theories in America.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, this conspiracy theory is based upon the belief that President Obama wasn't born in the United States, and therefore can not legally be the president of the United States.
Besides the fact that this conspiracy theory is baseless in it's "facts", and was debunked from the beginning, it still exists, although not as many people believe in it now, because of the fact that President Obama released his long form birth certificate in 2011.
Those that still believe this conspiracy theory not only still believe that he wasn't born in the United States, but that all the documents that prove he was born here are fakes.
Most birthers base their claims that President Obama was born in Kenya because of a Kenyan birth certificate that said that the president was born in Kenya. That birth certificate is actually fake, and the person who created it, actually admitted it was fake.
Another reason birthers still claim the the president wasn't born in the United States because of a recorded phone conversation between Barack Obama's step-grandmother, Sarah Obama, and an Anabaptist bishop, Ron McRae, in which she allegedly said that her grandson was born in Kenya. This is in fact false. She never said he was born in Kenya, and in fact said he was born in the United States.
So why the hell are there still people whom still believe that President Obama wasn't born in this country?
There may be a very simple answer to this: Those people are most likely racists who hate the fact that the president is black.
I am more then certain that if the president was white, and didn't have such a foreign sounding name, no one would even question if they were an American citizen.
Birther theories are considered so ridiculous, and has been debunked so completely, that even FoxNews, which of the three major cable news networks, is the most critical of the president, no longer even has birthers come on and talk about why they believe Obama wasn't born in this country. And the other networks tend to ignore birthers completely.
Not only is this conspiracy theory embarrassing to conservatives and Republicans, because most birthers are conservatives and Republicans, it should embarrassing to conspiracy theorist in general, because it makes them look like a bunch of racists and idiots.
You might be interested to know that John McCain, Obama's competition in 2008, was born in Panama. His father was stationed in the Panama Canal Zone. Technically it was U.S. territory, but if McCain had been black (or liberal), you could easily see the nutters trying to make an issue of it. "How do we know he was born across the line in the Canal Zone and not in Panama City proper?" Yet this issue never came up. Hmm, I wonder white--er, I mean, I wonder why?
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, Obama is not the first president to have a birther-type issue dog him. There is a serious question, historically, as to whether Chester A. Arthur (21st President, 1881-85) was actually born in Canada. There's no proof either way, and the issue did come up during Arthur's term (he acceded to the White House, was not elected to it, so it wasn't a campaign issue), but it was inconclusive.
I wonder how big of an issue it was for President Arthur? Probably not as much as it was for President Obama I guess. Back then it was harder to prove, or dis-prove, because birth certificates were not to common when he was born...
DeleteAnyways, I did know that McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone, but I only learned about that AFTER the election... Apparently no one really cared where he was born...