Now that President Barack Obama has released a copy of his long-form birth certificate, I figure the birther movement will soon fade away. But it’s hard to be sure about these matters, so I called my favorite inside source, Ananias Ziegler, media relations director of the Committee That Really Runs America.
After the usual pleasantries, he assured me that we can anticipate much more contention, even with the long-form certificate that the birthers have been demanding.
“How’s that?” I asked. “Haven’t they said that’s what they wanted to see?”
“Sure,” Ziegler said. “But it raises some questions that now need to be addressed.”
“It looked pretty standard to me,” I said. “So what questions could come up?”
“If you look at the certification,” Ziegler explained, “the baby’s name is listed as Barack Hussein Obama II. Yet he took the oath of office — a botched oath at that on the first try — as Barack Hussein Obama Jr. Now, which is it? Is he a Second or a Junior? If he’s a Second, he wasn’t sworn into office, and if he’s really a Junior, then the released birth certificate could be spurious.”
“That’s an interesting point,” I conceded, “Anything else?”
Ziegler sighed. “The long-form certificate can be attacked as a clever forgery that doesn’t prove anything. It’s just an image of a piece of paper, after all. So I’m sure you’ll see some more attacks from birthers who won’t give up trying to prove he wasn’t born in Hawaii. After all, where’s the video of his birth?”
“I don’t think that was common in 1961,” I pointed out. “They didn’t even have home video cameras.”
“But they did have 8-mm home- movie cameras. So why wasn’t Obama’s birth filmed? Or if it was, what happened to the film?”
“If there was an 8-mm home movie of Obama’s birth at Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu, couldn’t they just say it was a fake, too?” I asked.
“Of course,” Ziegler said. “You’re finally getting the idea behind the whole birther deal. There will never be enough evidence to satisfy the birthers.”
“But the whole thing is way too silly for your Committee to be taking part,” I said. “What’s in it for you?”
“You’re right that birtherism may be a bunch of nonsense,” Ziegler said. “But we get a lot out of it. It helps create the impression that Obama is an alien ‘other,’ and it adds to his distractions. Thus it leaves us more room to do the important stuff like eliminating Medicare, gutting Social Security, abolishing Medicaid, improving the tax climate for Big Oil and Big Money. The more time Obama’s people spend countering the birther rumors, the less time they have to fight Paul Ryan’s budget.”
“I see,” I said. “So no matter what happens, no matter what evidence is produced, birtherism won’t go away.”
“Of course not,” Ziegler said. “There will also remain the question of Barry Soetoro’s possible Indonesian citizenship. And some of your state legislators, who’d prefer that their constituents not pay attention to the condition of their schools and highways, can generate some publicity for themselves by introducing bills requiring candidates to prove citizenship. And Donald Trump will just find some other angle, like college transcripts and hidden messages in law-review articles.”
I sighed. “In other words, this is never going away, no matter what documents are released.”
Before he hung up, Ziegler agreed. “Too many people get too much mileage out of birtherism. So it won’t disappear anytime soon.”
Freelance columnist Ed Quillen (ekquillen@gmail.com) of Salida is a regular contributor to The Denver Post.
