Robert Beers
Bad economic times often seem to facilitate fanatics with irrational enthusiasms and veiled prejudices to positions of prominence.
Fr Chalres Coughlin
During the Depression Charles Coughlin, Catholic Father and father of hate radio, accused Franklin Roosevelt of “leaning toward international socialism and sovietism.”
Today we have Glen Beck calling the Obama Administration “communist” with the frequency and lack of credibility of Joe McCarthy.
I am not certain how much damage the Fox Views Channel does anymore as it has a fairly stable, right wing audience who watch it because they agree with everything Glen, Sean, Greta and Bill have to say. It reinforces conservative viewpoints but does it convert those who aren’t so inclined or, for that matter, don’t live 
in Orange Country, California?
Maybe the likes of Dr Orly Taitz, dentist, real estate agent, attorney, birther and Orange County resident may do much more damage.
Dr Orly Taitz
I am sure that those living in America must be a lot more familiar with Orly than I was because until last week I only thought it was the smaller airport in Paris.
This lady whose unique talents could sell your house while she got your will sorted out and simultaneously pull out a molar, says Barack Obama may have been born out of the country making him ineligible to be President of the US.
In 2007 the Obama campaign release his birth certificate.
Baby Barack
It wasn’t good enough for her attorney persona. She wants the original hospital long-form certificate despite the fact that the President’s birthplace, Hawaii, never had a longer form than the one he has and the original on file at the hospital that Orly wants to see no longer exists.
Like any number of various 21st Century institutions and bureaucracies, the State of Hawaii went digital in 2001 and all paper copies then went to recycling.
Such a rational, easily accepted and understood explanation such as this never carries any weight with people who stake their claim on the truth with screwball theories and conveniently created facts. The lady will continue her crusade
At one point, soon after I went to work at WTVJ in Miami, I had an office just inside the entrance of the news building and the proximity to the front door meant every publicity-seeking loony in town found his or her way into my office. We had lots of folks who commuted to Mars, believed they were Elizabeth Taylor’s love child, represented alien embassies in Hialeah and, of course, heard secret codes transmitted just to them via the Channel 4 signal.
“See you later, thanks for giving us your exclusive story have a pleasant trip back to Uranus, give my regards to Ms Taylor and greetings to Ambassador Zarkonite, hasta lumbago, ciao.”
They were harmless, often sweet lost souls; I rather liked them, as they were a brief respite from the often harsh reality of some news days.
If Orly Tailtz had walked in and said, “We know that there has been terrorism in Kenya and Indonesia. And just suppose those incidents repeat themselves. Don’t you think it is important for my clients to know where the loyalties of Barack Hussein Obama lie?’
In that Obama only once briefly visited Kenya, never really knew his Kenyan father, and, let’s see, he spent all of four years as child in Indonesia, so I don’t think it is the least bit important, Dr Taitz.
Interestingly, while not running for president (yet) she is running for the post of California Secretary of State. And yet Orly was born in COMMUNIST — at the time — Moldova and then she moved to Israel in her 20s before another move to the US. Which makes her quest for Obama’s roots to be a bit odd when she can not claim the one irrefutable fact that makes the President an American: a mother who was a US citizen. That meets the Consitutional requirements of ‘natural born citizen of the United States’ in the eyes of some legal scholars but it has never been tested in court.
What has been tested is Orly’s case which last Monday a federal appeals court dismissed and fined Dr Taitz $20,000 for wasting its time.
All of this we could all give a miss if it were not for so many people willing to buy into the nonsense. A Pew Poll this week said 57% of Republicans believe that Obama is a Muslim. Various polls say that about 45% of the US agrees with the birthers.
Orly Taitz is not the only one to blame for spreading such dangerous myths, Lou Dobbs, formerly of CNN, spread his doubts and pro-birthers suspicions to a mainstream audience.
And there is that great American embarrassment, the Great White Hope-less Sarah Palin who said, “Oh, wow, jeez, yes, amazing, I mean, well, why not, birth certificates are fair game. They wanted to see Trig’s what the difference?”
Quite a bit actually.
In Britain, the great chasm was and is about class. A newspaper editor in London told me not long ago that in his opinion the class divide in Britain is worse than ever.
In the US, of course, it has always been race that ripped and gnawed apart America. The election of Barack Obama seemed to be a final triumph over that great divide or at least a milestone to that end.
Yet almost half as many Americans voted against Obama than voted for him and certainly most who opposed the President were not racially motivated, a minority of some size probably was.
How many blacks or Asians are Tea Partiers?
Does the birther movement have any African-Americans members?
John McCann was born outside the US and his birth record was cleared up in days when he said he was born in what was then the American Canal Zone in Panama. If he had been elected would there have been a birther movement to argue that the zone was not really within the US?
Of course not.
There is an often unspoken conclusion to why this rubbish continues. It is impossible for me not to believe that a good portion of it, which started early in his campaigning days, is still simply about a Black man being in the White House.
Yes, some of his policies have fanned conservative flames, but in the end you cannot ignore the FBI’s fears of a rising militia movement and the nasty behavior at anti-health care rallies nor Sarah Palin’s rifle crosshairs on her Facebook page of those who switched their votes on the health care.
No shortage of US nuts to be sure and some, I’m afraid, of those currently being consumed can be extremely poisonous.
