We have problems to solve, and some people are chattering about Obama's birth certificate? Not only is this whacky, I don't even care if it's true. He could've been born on Klingon for all I care, and I still would have voted for him over John McCain.
Then Glenn Beck says that Obama is a racist and doesn't like white people. Good night, a black guy gets elected president and the wiring in Beck's brain appears to have been completely shorted out.
None of this makes any sense to very many people, but, as Joan Walsh said today, "the dirty fog of their constant smears has to tarnish Obama at least a little."
We've seen this movie before. Bill Clinton was less than two years into his presidency before he was accused of murder and drug-running from some landing-strip in the backwoods of Arkansas. In the early 90's, Jerry Falwell--the Glenn Beck of yore--was selling videotapes which made precisely these allegations.
This is why, incidentally, Clinton came to be called "the first black president." It was because he had endured the vilification, the assault on character, the constant effort to besmirch, that has been the black experience in America. As it turned out, Clinton really did feel their pain.
There is, however, a method to their madness, which is why Lynn Cheney was loathe to criticize the so-called "birthers" and, instead of firing Beck, FOX news lamely says that Beck's views are his own. Of course the higher-ups don't believe any of this nonsense themselves, but it serves a purpose. Walsh:
Yet now the forces of reaction are claiming Obama is the class warrior, and the race warrior, declaring war on whites, and trying to snatch the status-quo privileges -- like healthcare, allegedly -- from the haves, to provide for unworthy have nots.
It's a nasty little plan--truly Nixonian, Atwaterian, and Rovian--but it may work, again.