The networks have been surprisingly good about smacking down the birther nonsense. At Political Punch, Jake Tapper has consistently referred to it as nonsense. And NBC’s first read asks:
Simply put, what Trump is doing is the equivalent of a GOP presidential candidate in 1995 campaigning on the Vince Foster rumors, or a candidate in 1968 suggesting that LBJ was connected to the Kennedy assassination. It is crazy conspiracy talk that has gone mainstream. And while Republicans quietly dismiss Trump as a sideshow, they aren’t saying a lot publicly. What are they afraid of?
The answer is simple of course, they are afraid of their base. They should be. In the online poll MSNBC is running about 40% of respondents say that “There will always be doubt in my mind (about Obama’s place of birth)”. Of course, online polls are in no way scientific. Read through some of the comments, though.
Good work on the forgery. Hope whoever ends up admitting he/she/they faked it for “the good of the country” eventually sees justice.
This issue will never go away and Republicans will never denounce birthers forcefully, not until after the primaries anyway. Is there any wonder why no one wants to compete for these lunatics’ votes?
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
In other words, the networks don’t have to peddle it because the well is already poisoned enough to possibly swing elections.
BGinCHI
I’m almost, almost, curious what went on during Rush’s show today. Vapors?
Comrade DougJ
@BGinCHI:
He praised Trump. Halperin is very excited about this.
BerkeleyMom
I wouldn’t say they’ve been surprisingly good about smacking down the nonsense. Hundreds of hours have been devoted to these idiots–especially Trump in the last couple weeks. It’s embarrassing that the media lets them spew and just covers the controversy. We shouldn’t even know who Orly Taitz is for pete’s sake.
Warren Terra
I still think that we need to acknowledge the first birth certificate to be released, Jesse Taylor’s famous “Blackazoid” certificate.
And, if we decide to split the difference between one side’s story (Honolulu) and the other side’s story (Mombasa), the point halfway between Mombasa and Kenya on the surface of the earth turns out to be in Mongolia, making Obama the true Manchurian Candidate.
Villago Delenda Est
John had this nailed the other day. There is no document, no evidence, no testimony that can dissuade the birfers from the “truth” they embrace: that Barack HUSSEIN Obama is a Kenyan-Islamofascist-Soshulist-Not-Natural-Born-American-Citizen agent of the anti-Christ and is a fully owned and operated drone of the Papist-Mormon-Jewish cabal.
Zifnab
@The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik:
No one so deeply immersed in birtherism that a printed copy of the original birth certificate cannot sway them was ever going to vote for Obama, or any Democrat.
I’m not worried about whether these people will vote Republican or Democrat. Just curious whether they’ll show up to the polls at all.
sistermoon
@BerkeleyMom:
Amen. None of these clowns has been properly challenged, especially Grand Dragon Trump.
Whatever you may have thought of the late Tim Russert, he would have sliced Trump to ribbons in one hour (complete with video clips and quotes from his ever-changing policy positions) and sent him packing.
This current crop of media clowns can’t even ask a follow up question.
Mnemosyne
It’s bizarre how Tapper will refer to it as “nonsense” in one post and then accuse the president of lying about it being a controversy in another. Is it his knee desperately jerking to find “balance” and prove that both sides are just as bad?
Mac Wallace
Uh, LBJ was involved in JFK’s assassination.
Xecky Gilchrist
what Trump is doing is the equivalent of a GOP presidential candidate in 1995 campaigning on the Vince Foster rumors
I will be gobsmacked if Vince Foster rumors don’t pop up in the 2012 campaign.
They call them zombie lies for a reason!
Marmot
Good. I was hoping letting the Freaking Deranged Bloc continue the conspiracy theory would be one step too far for mainstream media.
Naive, I know.
El Cid
Good thing none of them covered Whitewater that much.
Bob Loblaw
Shit, things are getting so bad that DougJ is accusing leading Republicans of having some sense of propriety and integrity after all. Who woulda thunk it?
geg6
@sistermoon:
You are not familiar with Tim Russert’s work, I take it. Russert would never have sliced, diced, or even challenged the Hairpiece. First, the Hairpiece is an employee of Timmeh’s very own beloved, NBC. Second, Russert was the epitome of the Village for broadcast news in exactly the same way that Broder (and now Brooks) is for print. Ol’ Pumpkinhead would have sucked up to the Donald in exactly the same way he sucked up to Cheney, the Shrub, McCain, and Rumsfeld. You’re dreaming of some other Tim Russert, one with integrity and journalistic ethics. You know, the one that existed in an alternate universe.
Villago Delenda Est
@El Cid:
Whitewater…a created out of whole cloth scandal by Jeff Gerth of
The New York TimesPravda on the Hudson.Villago Delenda Est
@geg6:
Tim Russert with a beard?
Warren Terra
@Bob Loblaw:
No need to bring the crazy talk; rational self-interest will suffice to explain their actions, without requiring that they possess any particularly admirable attributes. Come the general election, most everyone who hates Obama enough to claim they think his birthplace is a mystery will vote for the Republican; some might stay home, some might vote fringe; heck, a tiny handful might even vote Obama – but most will vote Republican. So the only reason to suck up to them is to tap their perfervid energy in the primaries and in GOTV efforts – and the latter is risky if these nuts tell the people they’re chivvying to the polls why they’re doing so. Vaguely rational Republican politicians know they don’t need these people’s love to get their votes, and that to be seen sucking up to them could be toxic with the wider electorate; hence, the people who do suck up to them are stupid, crazy, or are actually just trying to market themselves to make money, rather than genuinely seeking the Presidency. Palin, of course, fits in all three of those categories.
ETA PS WordPress spellcheck is missing the quite enjoyable words “perfervid” and “chivvying”, both of which I assert do actually exist. For shame!
AkaDad
@BGinCHI:
Rush said that Trump now has two catch phrases. “You’re fired” and “I won”.
Lol
He won the “Idiot of the Year” award.
MagicPanda
Wishful thinking
—
After years of “he said / she said” journalism, the birther / long form nonsense reminds journalists that some things are actually true, and that some things are actually false, and that it is their job to help us sort it out.
Ha ha hahahahahha!!! Who am I kidding? (wipes tear)
Chad N Freude
This from the comments at FirstRead linked by DougJ:
I suppose that guy really kneads to no the troth.
gelfling545
@Warren Terra: I’m sure this is a sign of something or other, possibly from the Book of Revelations.
WereBear
@Villago Delenda Est: A pointy beard. That’s how you can tell.
General Stuck
The reason they put up with it is simple, being a Republican can be good for your bottom line, and your friends. So what we end up with these days, is a bunch of hucksters who basically look at it as services rendered sucking up to these lunatics, hoping to lock onto some stray cash or opportunity for some.
Since the average wingnut politician is like the now shattered conservative movement. A movement that was wrong, but was largely cogent and unifying to the ends of wingnuts acting with at least some sense of integrity and loyalty to central beliefs as a party.
Now the whole mess is like the debri sucked up into the destructive tea tard tornado swirling around that vortex of crazy. And a bunch of politicians in a state of free associative posturing on what ever right wing fragment of belief floats by on any given day. The GOP may be crazy, but it sure as shit ain’t broke. And that keeps the carcass animated, but still rotting and totally insane and getting more so with each passing day.
hells littlest angel
What are they afraid of?
The answer is simple of course, they are afraid of their base.
No they’re afraid of offending a sleazy, ignorant, dumbfuck rich guy.
Oh, wait. We’re both right.
Cat Lady
It’s all just so embarrassing. That anyone thinks that there’s a winner in any of this is just pathetic and disgusting, and every single journamalist in our FAIL media should spend the rest of their lives being pointed to and laughed at. I really don’t see any upside to any of this.
Warren Terra
@Chad N Freude:
Did you say troth?
Nellcote
@BerkeleyMom:
return of the swift boaters.
Midnight Marauder
Surely, you are not giving these assholes and clowns credit for being “good about smacking down the birther nonsense” AFTER THEY ENABLED IT FOR THE BETTER PART OF TWO YEARS?!
You have got to be fucking kidding.
Warren Terra
@Warren Terra:
Hm. Lost permission to edit (FYWP).
I was making a marriage joke, because that’s always where I’ve seen the word “troth” – as in, “plight thy troth”. But Google informs me that although this is where the word is used nowadays, that’s because “troth” is variant spelling of Old English for “truth”. So maybe your hypothetical winger is more Medievalist Scholar than redneck?
Warren Terra
@Midnight Marauder:
Yeah, well, you take what you can get.
And if I understand the current top post on the front page, the Birther “controversy” was only 4% of the news coverage recently, and it’s been slow news otherwise – just three wars, one of them new, civil unrest in Syria, nuclear meltdown in Japan, Budget fights in DC, and a Royal Wedding to compete with the Birther “issue”. So it’s not like they blow this nonsense out of proportion.
(disclaimer: I’ve made no effort to understand the actual meaning of that 4% figure).
Midnight Marauder
@Warren Terra:
This is the stupid 4% figure that Tapper is staking his whole article on:
Oh, okay. Well, that doesn’t sound so bad, right? Just 4% of the coverage…
until you dig through the Pew News Coverage report that Tapper references and you find little gems like this:
So, yes, it is correct to say that it was only 4% of overall coverage. But when looking at coverage specific to just the Obama Administration, you are talking about a disturbingly vast majority of the coverage being centered on birther nonsense.
And for fucks sake, before we go giving any credence to Tapper’s argument, can we also assess the quality of that coverage Tapper so desperately wants to defend?
Hey, lot of good facts and analysis there, Katie!
Wow, look at all that substance from Chuckles Todd!
This is a goddamn farce, is what it is.
Chad N Freude
@Warren Terra: That’s funny, too. I wasn’t aware of the trothers. And as erudite as I am, I did not know that “troth” is related to “truth”. Note that the hypothetical winger is real, and I was the Medievalist (Medievilist?) scolder.
Mako
blow me.
Triassic Sands
Donald Trump is exactly the kind of “serious” candidate the Republicans deserve.
Given how easy Trump thinks it will be for him to solve the country’s problems he won’t even need a full term to erase the debt, balance the budget, reform Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, trim the defense budget, end all the wars, get gas down to $0.29-9/10 / gallon, end teen pregnancy, fix education, and raise medium income to $250,000.00.
— Trump responding to a G. Stephanopoulos question about gas prices and OPEC.
Given a couple of weeks, Trump has solved the nation’s birth certificate problem and he didn’t even need to get Obama on the phone.
Apparently, all you Obots (Jeebus, I hate that term) who have been claiming the bully pulpit is a myth and useless, just need to watch Trump in action. Al Qaida? Just call up bin Laden on the phone and tell him: “OK, douche, you’re finished.” Al Qaida will fold — problem solved. Iran’s nuclear weapons program? Just call up Ahmadinejad and tell him: “OK, douche, you’re finished.” Iran admits everything and ends its program. A rogue asteroid on course to destroy Earth? Just call up the asteroid and say: “OK, douche, you’re finished.” Poof, the asteroid will disintegrate into an infinite number of tiny, harmless particles. End of problem.
Not only is the bully pulpit not powerless, it is absolutely the key to everything. It’s just that Obama is too stupid to use it (see Trump on Obama’s intelligence and academic record).
All this time, Obama could have solved every problem by simply getting the problem’s source on the phone and saying: “OK, douche, blah, blah, blah,” and the problem would have disappeared.
Clearly, the Republicans should nominate Donald “The Douche Slayer” Trump for president in 2012. With Michelle Bachman as his running mate. Of course, Trump having a female running mate could be a problem, because no matter who she is, she’s going to be all over Trump trying to get him to…well, let’s just say the idea that any woman could resist Trump’s manly manliness is absurd.
So, he’ll get 100% of the white female vote, and close to 100% of the African American vote, since African Americans adore Trump and are all begging him to run. I’m assuming the Angry Black Lady has already contributed all of her savings to Trump’s campaign, although why he would need campaign donations is a mystery, since all he has to do is call up Obama on the phone and say, “OK, douche, about the election…you’re finished.” Thank you, President Trump.
Tsulagi
Oh, they’ll compete for them during the primaries. Trump shows how easy and cheap it is to fluff/tease them to get their support. Of course it’s limp support, but Rs fluff the dicks they have, not the dicks they wish they had.
Looking forward to the comedy in next year’s primaries. With the advent of R-teabaggerdom since the last election, guessing any serious R-can is going to have to really outbatshit crazy the field to get the R-nomination. The really fun part is after they get the nom.
Best thing going for Obama’s reelection is the Tea Party. Fair chance the economy will still be crappy 18 months from now. Even better chance unemployment will still be 8+. Not too long from now could see $5 gas. Normally that would kill any incumbent’s reelection.
But Obama is going to be facing an R-nom who likely had to dial up the loon to 11 to win during the primaries then in the last few months in the general pivot toward sane. They know 27% doesn’t win an election. Teabaggers will feel jilted, while a fair number of sane voters in the D, I, and even R stripes will easily see the con. I’m an optimist.
Fred
Are you for real Komrade Klink? Seriously and I REALLY do mean this. Get your head out of your ass and read this.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2011/04/president-obama-tells-untruth-in-birth-certificate-press-briefing.html
Praise for Jake Tapper???? WTF! Seriously dude…wtf?
Warren Terra
If it isn’t wrapped up before then When was the last time there was a truly contentious Republican primary? 2008 wasn’t technically settled all that quickly, but after McCain romped home in New Hampster there was a dull inevitability to the result. 2000, 1996, and 1988 all were essentially coronations. And I’m too young to remember 1980, 1976, or 1968.
gex
@Villago Delenda Est: Kinda like how Flexo was the good version of Bender, even though he had the beard.
Paula
Personal rant, as a brown immigrant daughter of other immigrants: This whole birther shit is not just about Obama being a Democrat, it’s about him being “of color” and having a father who isn’t named Smith. The president of this country just got forced to show proof of citizenship. Because he’s not-white, and because his dad came from somewhere else (legally, and he left his son’s life pretty quickly, but who cares). And now people are questioning his grades in school because AA clearly lets brown people off easy.
OH YES BARACK OBAMA’S LIFE IS DEFINED BY WEALTH AND WHITE PRIVILEGE ALRIGHT.
In any case, a friend, coming off working in non-profit in NYC with a lot of feckless (and mostly white, upper middle class) Ivy League grads, talked in ’08 about how this country was going to “let” Barack Obama win one, but they were gonna set his ass up to fail (in the specific areas that upwardly mobile brown people in this society are deemed failures — to assumed “liberalism”, to “their people”, to “integration”) so that we can go back to same old same old. I though she was being overly cynical at the time, being really frustrated by the obvious race- and class-blindness exhibited by some of her coworkers, but she seems more right every single day.
Benjamin Cisco
@Paula: This.
__
And here, expressed more coherently than I could have: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX5ueEKsSWc
Paul in KY
@geg6: That’s my take as well. The only way he would have taken Trump on is if he had some personal animus towards The Donald.
Chris
Well, that’s an odd turn of phrase, considering that “it was all for the good of the country” was the justification for Watergate, Iran-contra and all the rest.
Ahhhh. Projection. Wingnut’s bread and butter.