Birthers Go Mainstream
BY Nancy Scola | Wednesday, July 22 2009
The notion that Barack Obama is somehow not a citizen of the United States has for months been confined to venues that the vast majority of Americans pay little attention to: conservative blogs like WorldNetDaily, where they are fundraising for a "Where's the Birth Certificate?" billboard; the White House's Open Government Initiative, where citizenship questions flooded the forum; and the United States Congress, where a bill has been introduced to demand that president's show proof of natural-born citizenship.
But the citizenship rumors are starting to bubble up to the teevee box, and are getting a mainstream airing.
Obama has dealt with "birthers," as the movement is known by its critics, since the campaign. His response then was to post to his "Fight the Smears" website his Certification of Live Birth from the state of Hawaii, dated August 8th, 1961 -- four days after his day of birth.What's sparking some of the increased attention is a YouTube video that spread widely online showing Delaware Republican Mike Castle confronted at a town meeting by a woman yelling of Obama, "he is not an American citizen!" (If you haven't seen this thing yet, watch it. It gets surreal when the woman demands that the crowd engage in an impromptu Pledge of Allegiance. Castle quickly joins in.)
While the Internet has provided the oxygen to sustain birther rumors for more than a year, the issue is now increasingly bubbling up to some of your more prominent cable television shows. CNN's Lou Dobbs has recently been entertaining the question in his inimitable way, saying that while he believes Obama to be a citizen of the U.S., "Why not just provide a copy of the birth certificate?" MSNBC's Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow both covered it last night, and Liz Cheney went on Larry King to got in hot water by explaining birther theories with the explanation that many people are "increasingly uncomfortable with a President who seems to be afraid to defend America." As Politico Ben Smith points out, this is something more serious than a Internet conspiracy theory, because it involves questioning Obama's very legitimacy as president of the United States.