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Kikomom
Joined: 24 Jun 2008
Location: them thar hills--Penna, USA--Zippy is my kid, the teacher in ROK. You can call me Kiko
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 Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 8:06 am Post subject: So there, Birthers |
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Who owns ya now?
And an excellent commentary by Josh on how ridiculous the argument is in the first place:
For All the Obvious Reasons |
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ubermenzch
Joined: 09 Jun 2008
Location: bundang, south korea
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| Posted: Tue Jul 28, 2009 9:59 pm Post subject: Re: So there, Birthers |
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| Thanks for the links. I especially enjoyed the commentary. I hadn't really paid much attention to this "issue", suspecting that it was probably just one of those paranoid fantasies that the lunatic fringe of conservative America seems to indulge in whenever they need an explanation for having lost. And perhaps also their inability to accept the fact that they lost and move on had something to do with this? Now that I've read up on it, I see that I was right. |
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Kikomom
Joined: 24 Jun 2008
Location: them thar hills--Penna, USA--Zippy is my kid, the teacher in ROK. You can call me Kiko
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Sat Aug 01, 2009 10:29 am Post subject: |
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| So what proportion of Southern whites doubt that Obama is an American citizen? While Ali did not release the racial breakdowns for the the South, and cautioned that the margin of error in the smaller sample of 720 people would be larger than the national margin of error (2 percent), the proportion of white Southern voters with doubts about their president�s citizenship may be higher than 70 percent. More than 30 percent of the people polled in the South were non-white, and very few of them told pollsters that they had questions about Obama�s citizenship. In order for white voters to drive the South�s �don�t know� number to 30 percent and it�s �born outside the United States� number to 23 percent, as many as three-quarters of Southern whites told pollsters that they didn�t know where Obama was born. |
http://washingtonindependent.com/53396/how-many-southern-whites-believe-obama-was-born-in-america
That's incredible. I figured it was much smaller. I'd have been surprised at 5%.
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/07/31/jonathan-kay-don-t-insult-9-11-truthers-by-comparing-them-to-brain-dead-birthers.aspx
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Jonathan Kay: Don't insult 9/11 'Truthers' by comparing them to brain-dead 'Birthers'
Ever wonder what happened to all those right-wing loonies who sent you email in 2008 insisting that Barack Obama was a Muslim? Turns out they now have greater ambitions: They're trying to convince the world that Obama isn't even a "natural born citizen of the United States," and so is ineligible to be President.
Amazingly, these debunked conspiracy theorists not only have created a large Internet-based movement in recent months, they've also managed to convince some Republican members of Congress that there is real doubt about the legitimacy of Barack Obama's presidency.
The movement has been dubbed the "Birthers" � a play on the word "Truthers," who believe that the September 11 terrorist attacks were an inside job perpetrated (or known about) by warmongering elements within the U.S. government and/or military.
Like the Birthers, the Truthers are widely dismissed in the mainstream media as conspiracy theorists. But lumping the two groups together is actually insulting to the Truthers � for at least three reasons.
1. Birther theories are completely nuts � even compared to the most way-out factions of the 9/11 Truth Movement. Most people dismiss the notion that the U.S. government would slaughter thousands of its own citizens as a pretext to invade Central Asia and the Middle East. But there is nothing to say that such an evil plot isn't theoretically possible. Other governments � from the Soviet Union to Nazi Germany � have staged equally evil "false flag" attacks to stir up popular opinion against an outside enemy. Even America's own military plotted a somewhat similar fake terrorist attack as a pretext to attack Cuba in 1962. In the case of the Birthers, by contrast, the underlying conspiracy theory doesn't even make sense: We are supposed to believe that Barack Obama's pregnant mother, living in Hawaii at the time, flew halfway around the world � by herself � so she could give birth to Barack in a Third World Kenyan hospital � and then flew back to Hawaii and conspired with Honolulu's Kapi'olani Medical Center to place bogus local birth announcements in not one, but two local newspapers � after which she hacked local birth-records offices to create a fake birth paper trail � and for what? To install her child as President of the United States � in 47 years.
2. Birthers tend to be racist. As some readers may know, I am writing a book about the 9/11 Truth movement, to be published in 2010. When I embarked on my research, I assumed that a lot of the folks I'd be interviewing would be anti-Semites and general hatemongers. But in fact, I haven't met one person who answers to that description. Most Truthers actually bend over backwards to distance themselves from anyone in the movement who sounds a note of old-fashioned bigotry. (The idea that 4,000 Jews had advance warning of the 9/11 attacks � and similar notions involving Jewish complicity in the attacks � tend to be characteristic of 9/11 conspiracy theorists in Muslim countries, where anti-Semitism is common.) Birthers, on the other hand, tend to be thinly disguised hatemongers and xenophobes who just can't get their head around the idea that the United States has a Black president. The idea that Obama is somehow a bogus or counterfeit American acts as a psychological proxy for their underlying bigtory.
3. Birthers are crude political partisans. I've met plenty of Truthers from both sides of the political spectrum � from Alex Jones on the hard right to Canada's own Michel Chossudovsky on the left. Some are libertarians, others are Marxists. Some are Democrats. Other are Republicans. In the case of the Birther movement, on the other hand, I am yet to hear of anyone who isn't a hardcore GOP partisan � which is why the Birther movement, unlike the Truther movement, is having major political repercussions in Washington: It's popularity in some GOP circles, and the willingness of various GOP figures to encourage it, has become a disgrace to the party. It's encouraging the notion that the American right is descending into looniness.
And here's one more amazing difference: Despite the fact that Birther theories are bizarre and hateful in a way that transcends anything produced by the Truther camp, it is the Birthers � not the Truthers � who have gained the attention of the mainstream media. Birthers even have a prime-time CNN champion in the form of once-respected-journalist-turned-xenophobic-weirdo Lou Dobbs.The Truthers, on the other hand, have no one: Not a single mainstream, national-level journalistic talking head gives them the time of day.
The birther phenomenon goes to show what has become of America's increasingly shrill and tribalized media and political culture: So long as an idea stirs up the lunatic base of one party or the other, it is guaranteed to find traction. Obama a Muslim? An Israel hater? A racist who despises "whites" and "white culture"? Sure, why not? All of the above!
I have no idea whether Barack Obama will succeed in revolutionizing American health care, curing the U.S. economy, making friends with Iran, or fulfilling any of his other stated goals. But when it comes to driving the American right positively stark-raving bat-crap, mission accomplished.
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I've never met a 'birther'. Or at least I don't think I have. I have, however, met countless 'truthers', who seems to enjoy interrupting my evening coffee. I've never found them to be crazy. These 'birthers' may be another beast entirely. The GOP needs to kill this, pronto. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Sat Aug 01, 2009 11:36 am Post subject: |
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But when it comes to driving the American right positively stark-raving bat-crap, mission accomplished.
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You wanna understand the psychology of the birther movement? Imagine that a Korean guy with a Japanese father and a Japanese name runs for president of Korea. His opponents toss the all the usual hyper-jingoistic rhetoric at him, but he still wins. Now, if you're one of those opponents, you gotta be thinking to yourself, at some level, that you are among the most incompetent political operatives ever. You can't even beat a Japanese guy. With a Japanese name. In Korea. Furthermore, since anti-Japanese posturing has been your party's bread-and-butter for decades now, it kinda casts a very grim shadow over that party's political fortunes.
Basically, you've gone to sleep and woken up in a nightmare world.
But...
If only people knew the dark truth about this guy. There must be SOMETHING reprehensble about him that will get the public back to seeing that no Jap can be trusted. To imagine otherwise is to concede that this nightmare world you've woken into is the new, irreversible state of things. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Sat Aug 01, 2009 11:48 am Post subject: |
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Good analogy.
I largely agree. But there is more here. A big factor is a deep alienation from the MSM. I empathize with this to a small point, as my dead horse (macroeconomics) is completely manipulated in most MSM for reasons of 'public perceptions' (best I can tell). The media does not accurately depict life for the average person, and in the American situation, heaps tons of scorn upon the middle American proletariat. It is only a few steps from that to seeing the entirety of so-called elite opinion as a fabrication for political ends. The bottom line is that they don't trust the news to any meaningful extent. Add to this their preexisting obsessions with this and that, and the birthers are 70% of white, southern citizens.
I think Kay is right in seeing racism as a major direct motivation in this. I saw a video of a 'town hall' where a hysterical white woman stood up and screamed that she wanted "her country back". I usually roll my eyes when lefties start talking about "coded speech", but that one is perfectly clear. |
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Pluto
Joined: 19 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sat Aug 01, 2009 3:48 pm Post subject: |
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Was this the video?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V1nmn2zRMc
Someone should slap these people back into realty and tell them to just grow up. 2010 elections aren't all that far away, and they want to waste their time on this?
______
Watching the video, it seems the mob mentality is beginning to take over. The GOP has really got to nip this in the bud... soon. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Sat Aug 01, 2009 4:28 pm Post subject: |
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| On the other hand wrote: |
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But when it comes to driving the American right positively stark-raving bat-crap, mission accomplished.
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You wanna understand the psychology of the birther movement? Imagine that a Korean guy with a Japanese father and a Japanese name runs for president of Korea. His opponents toss the all the usual hyper-jingoistic rhetoric at him, but he still wins. Now, if you're one of those opponents, you gotta be thinking to yourself, at some level, that you are among the most incompetent political operatives ever. You can't even beat a Japanese guy. With a Japanese name. In Korea. Furthermore, since anti-Japanese posturing has been your party's bread-and-butter for decades now, it kinda casts a very grim shadow over that party's political fortunes.
Basically, you've gone to sleep and woken up in a nightmare world. |
Ha ha. Except of course, neither Kenya nor black people have historically brutalized America for the first half of the 20th Century. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Sat Aug 01, 2009 5:59 pm Post subject: |
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Yup. That's the one. |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Sun Aug 02, 2009 1:07 am Post subject: |
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| On the other hand wrote: |
| If only people knew the dark truth about this guy. There must be SOMETHING reprehensble [sic] about him that will get the public back to seeing that no Jap can be trusted. To imagine otherwise is to concede that this nightmare world you've woken into is the new, irreversible state of things. |
In the case of BO, this is exactly true. There is so much we already know that is reprehensible about him, there is no need to resort to the birth nonsense. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Sun Aug 02, 2009 3:15 am Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
| On the other hand wrote: |
| Quote: |
But when it comes to driving the American right positively stark-raving bat-crap, mission accomplished.
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You wanna understand the psychology of the birther movement? Imagine that a Korean guy with a Japanese father and a Japanese name runs for president of Korea. His opponents toss the all the usual hyper-jingoistic rhetoric at him, but he still wins. Now, if you're one of those opponents, you gotta be thinking to yourself, at some level, that you are among the most incompetent political operatives ever. You can't even beat a Japanese guy. With a Japanese name. In Korea. Furthermore, since anti-Japanese posturing has been your party's bread-and-butter for decades now, it kinda casts a very grim shadow over that party's political fortunes.
Basically, you've gone to sleep and woken up in a nightmare world. |
Ha ha. Except of course, neither Kenya nor black people have historically brutalized America for the first half of the 20th Century. |
Yeah, not an exact parallel. But it was the closest I could think of, in terms of a group in both countries that opportunistic politicians would have a ready stock of demonizing images for. |
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