April 27, 2011: Columnist Decries Racial ‘Core’ of ‘Birther’ Controversy

Journalist Michael Tomasky, in a column for The Guardian, says the entire “birther” conspiracy theory, which for three years has questioned President Obama’s US citizenship, “is madness, and that the madness comes down to the fact that the president is, for a certain depressingly high percentage of Americans, an Other with a capital O—the kind of person who, to their way of thinking, could not possibly have been legitimately elected the president of any United States they know.” An entire array of “alternate” explanations has been advanced—ACORN, a voter registration and poverty-advocacy group, “stole the election for him,” perhaps, or a “cabal of shifty liberal journalists, many of whom merely happen to be Jewish (and—full disclosure—of which your correspondent was a member), allegedly conspired to vault him into our land’s highest office.” Americans could not have actually voted Obama into office. Ultimately, Tomasky writes, the central question of Obama’s presidency is not about his citizenship, which has time and again been proven legitimate (see June 13, 2008, August 21, 2008, and October 30, 2008), and is further bolstered by the long-demanded release of his “long form” certificate (see April 27, 2011). “A conspiracy of immense proportions, concocted all the way back in 1961, had to be the only explanation for how this black man got to the White House,” Tomasky writes. “And if you think race isn’t what this is about at its core, ask yourself if there would even be a birther conspiracy if Barack Obama were white and named Bart Oberstar. If you think there would be, you are delusional.” Birther advocate Donald Trump, Tomasky writes, will crow about “forcing” the release of the ‘long form” certificate, and hardcore “birthers” will refuse to accept its validity, instead concocting another mare’s nest of conspiracy theories to “prove” its falsity (see April 27, 2011). While this may make the “birthers,” and the Republicans who continue to support them, “look sillier to a larger percentage of people,” Tomasky concludes, “the problems here are racial paranoia and the bald willingness of politicians to lie in order to stoke it.” [Guardian, 4/27/2011]