NEW YORK — Six months after Barack Obama’s inauguration, a persistent and noisy legion of doubters won’t let go of an already debunked claim — that he is actually a foreign-born, illegal president.
The issue has flared again on political blogs, TV news shows and even a town hall meeting, widely circulated on YouTube, in which a Republican congressman was booed for saying Obama is a citizen.
Mainstream Republicans who want the issue to go away are having a tough time stamping it out as the so-called “birthers” resurface, with assists from talk show host Rush Limbaugh and CNN’s Lou Dobbs.
Some who had initially dismissed the claim as a laughable political sideshow now wonder whether it’s gotten out of control.
“I’ve stopped laughing,” New York Daily News columnist Errol Louis wrote Thursday. “Too many political and media leaders are deliberately fanning the flames of ignorance and fear, and they should be ashamed.”
Theories that Obama was born abroad abounded during the presidential campaign, even after an official Hawaii birth certificate was produced, along with August 1961 birth notices from two Honolulu newspapers. The birthers contend that Obama’s Hawaiian birth certificate is a fake, and many say he was actually born in Kenya, his father’s homeland.
Limbaugh, for example, joked that Obama and God have something in common — the lack of a birth certificate.
