Birther claptrap deserves out reproach Atlanta Journal Constitution ^ | 4/29/2010 | Loren Collins

Birther claptrap deserves out reproach
Atlanta Journal Constitution ^ | 4/29/2010 | Loren Collins

Posted on Friday, April 30, 2010 7:27:34 PM by curiosity

Now, eight years later, three Georgia legislators are indulging the fantasies of a new contingent of conspiracy theorists who believe in a different cover-up. These conspiracy theorists, or “birthers,” refuse to accept the constitutional eligibility of President Barack Obama, under the hypothesis that he might not have been born in Honolulu, and that he instead may have engaged in a five-decade-long ruse before his secret foreign birth was exposed via fabricated rumors spread by fringe bloggers with no evidence late in the campaign.

The conspiracists’ favored theory is that Obama’s mother left her Honolulu home and traveled halfway around the planet to give birth in the Third World nation of Kenya in 1961. To some people, it is apparently easier to believe that our first African-American president was actually born in Africa than to believe that he was born at the local Honolulu hospital.

When his birthplace was publicly questioned in June 2008, the Obama campaign promptly published his certification of live birth online, clearly identifying his place of birth as “Honolulu, Hawaii.”

When online conspiracists said that was a digital forgery, FactCheck.org visited campaign headquarters and took multiple photographs of the document.

When conspiracists demanded extrinsic evidence, two contemporary birth announcements were located in Hawaiian newspapers. And when they demanded even more, Hawaii’s vital records registrar issued a public statement saying that the president’s original vital records confirm his birth in Hawaii.

(By contrast, what evidence did you ever see that Bill Clinton was born in Hope, Ark.? Can you even name the state George W. Bush was born in?)

Yet the conspiracists remain unsatisfied. And so do, apparently, at least three Georgia politicians. In late 2009, gubernatorial candidate Nathan Deal announced that he was writing a letter to Obama asking where he could find evidence of Obama’s eligibility. It seems Deal is either inexplicably ignorant of all the evidence cited above, or considers it insufficient. Even more inexplicably, Deal refuses to release a copy of his letter for Georgia voters to see what nonsense he wrote.

More recently, when Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) was asked in an interview if he could simply say that the president is an American citizen, Broun responded “I don’t know.” Then, when given the opportunity to clear the air in a follow-up interview, Broun only dug himself deeper into denialist territory. Asked “Do you believe the president’s citizenship is in question?” Broun gave a long, rambling reply, eventually concluding with “I don’t know, nobody knows for sure, we’ve not seen any documentation one way or the other.”

As illustrated above, this is an outright lie. Broun has not only allied himself with denialists, but has chosen to further entrench himself with them even when given the opportunity to back away.

Finally, state Rep. Mark Hatfield (R-Waycross) recently introduced House Bill 1516. Had it passed, it would have required presidential candidates to provide evidence of their constitutional eligibility in order to appear on Georgia ballots. In the abstract, such a requirement is perfectly reasonable.

But Hatfield’s real intent shines through in the details. Hatfield does not propose that his fellow General Assembly members should prove their eligibility under the Georgia Constitution, nor that our statewide elected officials, such as the governor, should do so. Nor does he propose the same standard of proof for our federal representatives and senators.

Hatfield’s bill does not even demand documentation from vice presidential candidates, who have the same eligibility standards as the president. Most astonishingly, Hatfield proposes nothing to ensure the constitutional eligibility of any third-party presidential candidates; his bill covers only Republicans and Democrats.

In other words, if Hatfield’s bill passed, the only candidates in the November 2012 election whose eligibility it would scrutinize would be Barack Obama and his Republican challenger. Hatfield has written a bill so narrow that the only way it could be narrower would be for it to identify Obama by name.

Hatfield even admits his bill is targeted at Obama. He says, “I don’t think that the American people have been given any adequate documentation of the president’s citizenship.” This, even though he already has a birth certification, birth announcements and a state official’s confirmation. And to whom did he give his first public interview about his bill? Joseph Farah, the Internet’s leading birther propagandist.

Birtherism is denialist claptrap wrapped in a veil of patriotic constitutionalism. Just as Georgia voters did not ignore McKinney’s conspiracism in 2002, Georgia voters in 2010 should not turn a blind eye to the indulging of birthers by our elected officials of today. Their actions are a boon to conspiracy theorists but an embarrassment to our state.

Loren Collins, an Atlanta attorney, runs an anti-birther blog called Barackryphal.

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