People
who are desperate to latch on to anything when they need to attack someone - anyone - are
usually unstable in their desperation. The problem with many right-wing
media outlets is that they give these people more than equal time,
becoming as unreasonable as the people they're supporting.
For
example: FOX News has already been revealed as THE media to attack
Barack Obama on anything. After all, we witnessed "Dijongate,"
instituted by Sean Hannity. FOX inter-office memos have revealed that
staff has been ordered to paint the President in a bad light for
everything, no matter what the subject. Hannity and other FOX pundits
(like Greta Van Sustern - supposedly a "journalist/reporter") have
taken every opportunity, no matter how scant, to keep hammering away at
Obama's image.
Even individual commentators from other networks have succumbed to ridiculous cause celebres such as the "birther movement."
Birthers
are (at best) laughable and (at worst) unstable. They are the
uneducated fringe who are given center stage simply because they seem
so irrepressably ridiculous. They will go to any lengths to disguise
their hatred for Obama as a matter of patriotism. They will not accept
the fact that the questions of Obama's birth have been answered and
that birther "theories" have been debunked.
They also cherish any media that shows the slightest amount of serious interest in them.
They found that wedge with conservative commentator Lou Dobbs of CNN.
From ThinkProgress. com:
'The Wacko Wing'
Last Thursday, CNN President Jon Klein sent an e-mail to a handful of the network's "Lou Dobbs Tonight" staffers informing them that he considered one of the stories pursued by the infamously anti-immigrant host to be "dead." On his radio show the week before, Dobbs declared that President Obama needed to "produce a birth certificate," picking up on a thoroughlydebunked conspiracy theory that claims Obama was not born in the United States, and the birth certificate released by his campaign last year was fake. Dobbs repeatedly pushed the "birther" cause despite the fact that his colleagues at CNN have repeatedly called the story "total bull."
In fact, while guest-hosting Dobbs' own show on July 17, Kitty Pilgrim
refuted the fringe theory, saying, "CNN has fully investigated the
issue, found no basis for the questions
about the president's birthplace, but the controversy lives on,
especially on the Internet." But Dobbs has persisted, attacking his
critics as "limp-minded, lily-livered lefties" who hate him because he has "the temerity to inquire as to where the birth certificate was." As Dobbs continued to air
the conspiracy theory, Klein backed off his admonition of the host,
telling the Los Angeles Times that Dobbs had handled the issue in a "legitimate"
manner and "if there are future news pegs, then we have to take that
story as it comes." On Sunday, Washington Post media critic Howard
Kurtz used his CNN show to chastise media outlets that "give the birthers any airtime" to repeat their "ludicrous claims." Kurtz specifically criticized Dobbs for not acting "responsible."
And
lest we forget, Lou Dobbs' last brush with the Obama administration
involved buying several boxes of the obviously racist Obama's Waffles at
the Values Voters Summit. Even Tony Perkins was not amused.
What
we have here is the image of our country as a place where every person,
sane or not, can gain media attention if they latch on to just one
commentator.
The Washington Independent has
a great piece on the trivial and stupid theory that Obama's
grandparents lied about the birth certificate to avoid a custody battle.
Birthers are also people who have read and believed The Weekly World News. So, of course, they believed: (from wikipedia):
...profiles on the location and nature of Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction, including the news that Saddam Hussein had an arsenal of giant slingshots, the missing link and Dinosaurs.
... a series of articles profiling the ongoing relationship, and eventual marriage of Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden.
...that Bin Laden is actually a dwarf, that he recruited a cloned Adolf Hitler to join Al Qaeda.
...Since being captured by Batboy, Saddam had been humiliated by female prison guards, won the United States lottery, and even demanded that the government pay for his sex change operation.
Now the birthers have an absolute ally in their quest for more insanity in The Weekly World News website:
July 22, 2009
WASHINGTON,
DC "" The official copy of Barack Obama's birth certificate was stolen
this week by Republicans wishing to halt his health care reform. Earlier
this week a group of conservatives stole the Presidents birth
certificate, and are now holding it ransom to stall talks on Health
Care reform. The group stealing the certificate was led by Florida
Representative Bill Posey. He, along with California Congressman John
Campbell, led an elite squad of commandoes in a daring heist at the
Honolulu hospital where the document, real or forged, was kept.
The Weekly World News went out of print in 2007 and the website WeeklyWorldNews.com is still operating as a PARODY.
Dan Vojir is a San Francisco writer and raconteur. His latest attempt is "Sacred Cows Make the Best Hamburger - How to becaome a lion and devour the Christian Right."
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
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