History for Stupid People, Cont’d

I think part of what bugs me about the birthers is not just the stupidity of conspiracy theorizing in general, but the fact that the Christians who indulge in it (including, shamefully, Catholics) remind me of nothing so much as anti-Catholic conspiracy theorists. The sheer malignant uncharity, the complete credulity accorded any rumor that might vindicate that uncharity, is what strikes me. It’s like the anti-Catholics who grab some line from some Church Father to “prove” he believed in sola scriptura, then resolutely shut their eyes to the full context of the passage which makes it obvious he believed no such thing. There’s a willed dishonesty about it that smells like a day old fish. Case in point, this little exchange from my comboxes between two readers:

Okay, for those who think “birthers” are conspiracy nuts – here’s what the media isn’t reporting:

1)Obama’s paternal grandmother was recorded as saying that she “was in the delivery room in Kenya when he was born August 4, 1961.”

This particular lie was started when conspiracy theorists posted a truncated recording of an interview with Obama’s grandmother. There was confusion in the translation, where his grandmother thought she was answering the question, “Were you in Kenya when he was born?” But the translator thought he was asking, “Were you there when he was born here in Kenya?”

Here is an example of the misleading presentation, where they only play the recording up until the miscommunication, leading the listener to believe that she said he was born in Kenya.

But, if you actually listen to the full recording, you find out that the mistake was corrected immediately after that YouTube video leaves off. You can find the FULL recording here:

2) Hawaii has legal statutes permitting the issuance of a certificate of live birth for children born on foreign soil provided that the parents had declared the State of Hawaii as their legal residence for at least one year immediately preceding the birth or adoption of such child.
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The media has reported on this, and has debunked it.

From the Director of Communications of the Hawaii Department of Health:

“If you were born in Bali, for example,” Okubo explained, “you could get a certificate from the state of Hawaii saying you were born in Bali. You could not get a certificate saying you were born in Honolulu. The state has to verify a fact like that for it to appear on the certificate.”
From here.

And, as you know, the certificate presented by the Obama campaign said he was born in Honolulu.

And then of course you have the Director of the Department of health saying that Obama was born in Hawaii. Which you can find here.

But, of course, none of this matters to the conspiracy theorists. They continue on and on spouting half-truths and flat out lies.

I am no fan of the Obama administration. I didn’t vote for him. But, I think time could be better spent attacking him on the issues rather than something that has been sufficiently debunked (and probably never deserved to be an issue in the first place).

The first reader ends by saying, “There is grounds for their dispute, and it’s not surprising to me the amount of effort that the media has gone to in order to discredit those who are speaking out about the issue.”
Note the presuppositions at work here. Obama is guilty till proven innocent. If somebody in the media debunks the lies, they aren’t debunking a lie but “trying to discredit those who are speaking out.” Uh huh. People producing obvious documentary evidence that Obama was born when and where he said he was born are the problem. People doctoring that evidence and credulously passing along lies are just “speaking out” about this issue.”

Another conservative, driven to the point of exasperation by the Idiot Takeover in conservative circles writes me:

The really stupid thing about the whole situation is that because Obama’s mother was an American citizen at the time of his birth, he is a U.S. citizen by birth no matter WHERE he was born. John McCain was born of American parents in the Panama Canal Zone. Regardless of whether the Canal Zone is U.S. territory, or was, he was American by right of his birth to American parents.

The relevant law is the Naturalization Act of 1790. The Constitution requires that the President be a natural born citizen, NOT that he be born in America. The Constitution does not define “natural born citizen” but leaves it to Congress to define. Congress, in the Naturalization Act of 1790, granted every child of American parents citizenship by birthright. I was born at 7th Army Headquarters, Heidelberg, Germany. My military birth certificate was accompanied by a document called “Report of United States Citizen Born Abroad”. It seems pretty clear to me that even though I was not born on U.S. soil, I was a U.S. citizen at birth, by right of my birth to American parents.

This is a total non-issue. Some people are just ignorant and would rather spout off that actually do a little research to improve their condition.

I don’t know about the fine points of the law here (though the guy who wrote the above is an attorney, FWIW). However, it’s all a moot point as far as I’m concerned because Obama was, you know, born in Hawaii. Birthers are either ignorant of a few elementary facts they could discover in two minutes if they actually wanted to do so, or they are liars, or they are paranoid kooks whom no amount of evidence will persuade.

That’s because there was no grand conspiracy to fake birth announcements in two local papers in 1961 as part of a long term strategy for a Marxist takeover of the government in 48 years. The guy won the election, dudes. He’s a natural born American. Deal with it.