Hawaii's governor, Neil Abercrombie, is trying to debunk, once and for all, arguments of the "birthers"--conspiracy theorists unworthy of capitalization who insist that President Obama was not born in the United States and is thus ineligible to be president.
(DIGRESSION: We can almost sympathize with the "birthers"; we had doubts as to George W. Bush's presidential legitimacy based on a similarly tenuous premise: that he had received fewer VOTES than his opponent from those born in the United States. Oh, wait: That was actually true. EOD)
Barack Obama, of course, has provided a copy of his birth certificate--an official copy--which presumably was considered sufficient proof of his citizenship to allow him to get a passport or a social security card or, y'know, a JOB at various points in his life. Still "birthers" want to see the official "long form" of the birth certificate, which is not considered a public document in Hawaii. Governor Abercrombie has taken it upon himself to initiate discussions with the appropriate agencies in Hawaii to have them release this document, thus refuting, once and for all, this most specious of arguments.
Governor, we feel your pain, and, for what it's worth, we applaud your passion on this issue. But, seriously, why bother? Do you think for a second that, if and when you are able to publish this information, the "birthers" will back down? Do you really envision any scenario in which these folks acknowledge their mistake much less apologize? When you release the birth certificate, they will no doubt simply claim that this is a manufactured document--that you yourself are in cahoots--CAHOOTS!--with this illegitimate administration.
That's the beauty of a conspiracy theory: Any proof offered against it is just greater proof that the conspiracy exists.
For the first 200+ years of our history, we were able to treat stupid people as, well, stupid. We ignored them or, very briefly, we put them in the news and made fun of them. Nobody with even half a brain tokk, fo9r example, "flat-earthers", seriously. Then we got 24 hour news channels and Fox. The original 24 hour news channels needed to fill time AND couldn't be bothered doing so with NEWS (so dry, so depressing) so they did it with "colourful". Sarah Palin was a moron, but she was a cute moron so let's cover her. The Tea Partyists were deranged, but they were colourfully deranged, so let's cover them. Then people started saying, Well I thought she was stupid and they were dseranged, but big TV networks wouldn't be covering them if that were so, would they? Ergo: There MUST be something to them! Ergo, they are important! Ergo: They CANNOT be stupid or deranged. Into this breach jumped Fox, and, next thing you know, Rand Paul is in Washington. Oh, and, just for the record, Christine O'Donnell was, is, and always will be, stupid and deranged. Even Fox won't fight that one.
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