White House releases President’s long-form birth certificate; birthers not satisfied

Appar­ent­ly hop­ing to fan the flames of the “birther” con­tro­ver­sy (which is mak­ing the right wing look ridicu­lous) Pres­i­dent Oba­ma today autho­rized the release of his “long-form” birth cer­tifi­cate, which, under the laws of the State of Hawaii, would oth­er­wise not be sub­ject to pub­lic records requests.

I’m guess­ing the White House knows full well that the release of this doc­u­ment isn’t going to shut up any birthers. Those who have con­vinced them­selves Barack Oba­ma isn’t an Amer­i­can cit­i­zen and was­n’t born in Hawaii were nev­er going to be appeased with a long-form birth certificate.

But our brain-dead tra­di­tion­al media just loves faux con­tro­ver­sies like this, as evi­denced by CNN’s recent “spe­cial report” on the mat­ter. Releas­ing the long-form birth cer­tifi­cate gives tele­vi­sion com­men­ta­tors more evi­dence to use against those kooky birthers with when they inevitably end up talk­ing about this.

The White House ben­e­fits if would-be Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial hope­fuls are spend­ing their time in debates argu­ing whether Barack Oba­ma was born in Hawaii or not. It makes the Repub­li­can Par­ty look sil­ly and dom­i­nat­ed by con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists. Mean­while, Oba­ma can look, well, presidential.

Hilar­i­ous­ly, right wing orga­ni­za­tions are releas­ing state­ments say­ing they’re with­hold­ing judg­ment until they can care­ful­ly scru­ti­nize the doc­u­ment, and not­ing the “late­ness” of its release.

Barack Oba­ma is not — and nev­er was — under any oblig­a­tion to release his birth cer­tifi­cate. Like any oth­er Amer­i­can, he is enti­tled to the pri­va­cy that the law affords. His high-pro­file accusers, inter­est­ing­ly enough, have not both­ered to release their birth cer­tifi­cates. Where’s the proof they were born here? How do we know that they’re Amer­i­can cit­i­zens? Maybe they were secret­ly born some­where else!

In fact, accord­ing to birther log­ic, none of us are real­ly Amer­i­cans. Not unless and until we’ve plas­tered our long-form birth cer­tifi­cate on a sign­post some­where so any of our fel­low maybe-cit­i­zens can see it.

A sane, ratio­nal press corps com­mit­ted to true jour­nal­is­tic prin­ci­ples would not legit­imize the base­less con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries of peo­ple who despise Barack Oba­ma. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we don’t have a sane, ratio­nal press corps. The White House has decid­ed to take advan­tage of the sit­u­a­tion and lever­age it for polit­i­cal gain. Noth­ing wrong with that tac­tic, I sup­pose, if the First Fam­i­ly has signed off on it.

But I think I speak for a great many oth­er pro­gres­sives when I say this whole birther sideshow is just more evi­dence that our media is in greater decline (in almost every respect imag­in­able) than any oth­er insti­tu­tion in this country.

And that’s a prob­lem, because with­out a healthy, eth­i­cal, and vibrant fourth estate, we can’t have a mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tion with each oth­er. Nor can we know what our gov­ern­ment is doing in our names.

POSTSCRIPT (Ken): There are some who see the Pres­i­dent releas­ing his birth cer­tifi­cate as a good thing, cer­tain to cause the press corps to fur­ther mar­gin­al­ize birthers (as if they were doing that already, which they’re not)  and sure­ly to change the nar­ra­tive to how the Repub­li­can par­ty will now deal with its crazy wing. I’m not so sure that’s the case.

In the Pres­i­den­t’s state­ment today, he said:

“We’re not going to be able to solve our prob­lems if we get dis­tract­ed by sideshows and car­ni­val barkers.

I know that there’s going to be a seg­ment of peo­ple for which, no mat­ter what we put out, this issue will not be put to rest.  But I’m speak­ing to the vast major­i­ty of the Amer­i­can peo­ple, as well as to the press.  We do not have time for this kind of silli­ness.  We’ve got bet­ter stuff to do.  I’ve got bet­ter stuff to do.  We’ve got big prob­lems to solve.  And I’m con­fi­dent we can solve them, but we’re going to have to focus on them — not on this.”

The irony here is that Pres­i­dent Oba­ma suc­cumbed to the end­less media sto­ries and silli­ness on the sub­ject, which he pur­ports to want to avoid. By releas­ing his birth cer­tifi­cate the Pres­i­dent did­n’t appease his oppo­nents, who can nev­er be appeased.

Phil Berg, who filed one of the orig­i­nal birther law­suits, now believes that Oba­ma was adopt­ed by his Indone­sian father and lost his U.S. citizenship:

“I think the issue is that he’s not any more nat­ur­al born. I don’t care if he releas­es his birth cer­tifi­cate or what­ev­er,” said Berg. “Let’s see his records com­ing back through immigration.”

Orly Taitz, once called ‘Queen of the birthers’ and who was respon­si­ble for a num­ber of law­suits, is ver­i­fy­ing the doc­u­men­t’s authen­tic­i­ty and now believes that the pres­i­dent is using a false social secu­ri­ty number.

It’s a tried and true tac­tic in elec­toral pol­i­tics to  make mar­gin­al to false claims about your oppo­nent to dis­tract them from the task at hand. What is price­less is when a can­di­date or elect­ed offi­cial spends time refut­ing such charges by pro­duc­ing evi­dence to the con­trary. Divert­ing the oppo­nen­t’s atten­tion by forc­ing them to  fight dubi­ous and false claims, takes their focus away from the issues of the day and, when an oppo­nent, such as Oba­ma, address­es those charges it gives them a mea­sure of legitimacy.

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma does­n’t need to waste his time address­ing the false­hoods per­pet­u­at­ed by a group of (arguably) racist mal­con­tents or a loud­mouth cor­po­rate rob­ber baron. It does not serve him or the Amer­i­can peo­ple well to dwell on or respond to these issues. As he sim­ply said today, we’ve got big­ger prob­lems to solve and we do not have time for this kind of silliness.