April 27, 2011: Columnist: ‘Birther’ and Other Conspiracy ‘Fantasies’ Surrounding Obama are ‘Race-Baiting’ and ‘Fear-Mongering’

New Yorker columnist David Remnick joins a number of media figures and others in proclaiming the “birther” controversy, now presumably settled by President Obama’s issuance of his “long form” birth certificate (see April 27, 2011), to be rooted in racism (see April 26, 2011, April 26, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, April 27, 2011, and April 27, 2011). Remnick writes: “There is the birther fantasy; the fantasy that Bill Ayers wrote Dreams from My Father (see August 1, 2008 and After and May 7, 2010); the fantasy that the president has some other father, and not Barack Obama Sr. (see October 24, 2008 and Before October 27, 2008); the fantasy that Obama got into Harvard Law School with the help of a Saudi prince and the Nation of Islam (see July 21, 2009). There is a veritable fantasy industry at work online and in the book-publishing industry; there are dollars to be made. The cynicism of the purveyors of these fantasies is that they know very well what they are playing at, the prejudices they are fanning: that Obama is foreign, a fake, incapable of writing a book, incapable of intellectual achievement. Let’s say what is plainly true (and what the president himself is reluctant to say): these rumors, this industry of fantasy, are designed to arouse a fear of the Other, of an African-American man with a white American mother and a black Kenyan father.” The only “radical” things about Barack Hussein Obama, Remnick writes, are his race and his name. “[E]ven now, more than two years after the fact, this is deeply disturbing to many people, and, at the same time, the easiest way to arouse visceral opposition to him.” Opposition to Obama based on these qualities is, Remnick writes, “a conscious form of race-baiting, of fear-mongering.” Remnick accuses billionaire television host and birther enthusiast Donald Trump of directly and deliberately involving himself in such race-bating, but, he concludes, “[t]he shame is that there are still many more around who, in the name of truth-telling, are prepared to pump the atmosphere full of poison.” [New Yorker, 4/27/2011]