Writes Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for the Washington Post, Eugene Robinson:
"To those deniers who can’t come to terms with the fact of the Obama presidency, I have nothing to offer but this: Yes, he’s smarter, richer, luckier and better looking than you, and he’s your president. Yours, mine and ours. And he’s black. Get over it."
"So the leader of the free world summons the media for an important announcement — but not about war, peace or the economy. It’s about his birth certificate
This just in: President Obama has proved, yet again, that he is a natural-born citizen of the United States. Which we already knew — “we” meaning those of us who believe there is such a thing as objective reality.
I include in this reality-based group at least some of the “carnival barkers,” as Obama called them, who have led the gullible and the paranoid down the rabbit hole of “birther” conspiracy theory. Did Donald Trump ever really believe there was a question about Obama’s birthplace? Of course not; look how quickly he moved on to the next bogus “mystery,” which apparently involves Obama’s stellar academic record — a little too stellar, perhaps? A bit too perfect?
Two ugly forces had to combine to produce the birth certificate sideshow, which can only be described as a national disgrace. One is a calculated attempt by Obama’s political opponents to de-legitimize his presidency.
It seems obvious to me that this campaign to paint the president as some sort of usurper — this insistence that despite winning the popular vote by a healthy margin and the electoral vote by a landslide, he wasn’t really elected — has everything to do with race.
Does anyone disagree? Well, just imagine what the birthers would be saying if Obama — like his Republican opponent in 2008, John McCain — had been born in the Panama Canal Zone. Or think of the uproar if Obama — like George W. Bush in 2000 — had lost the popular vote but won the electoral college."
AND FINALLY THIS:
"The birther lunacy is an extreme case. The short-form birth certificate that Obama released in June 2008 was the official document, according to Hawaii officials. They should know, right? Wrong, said the deniers, we need the long-form certificate, even though it’s not considered official. Obama produced it Wednesday, and that settles the question, right? No sooner had the president finished speaking than a birther e-mail landed in my inbox, headlined 'Case closed? Not so fast.' ”
The Birther Controversy has always been about Mr. Obama's race. To deny this ugly fact is to deny this ugly reality. The birthers need to face up to what they are: racists. Once they do so, they will be able to get help for their psychological problem.
