American Made
Barack Obama and the “Birther” Movement
2009-08-06
By Goldie Taylor

Call it sheer fantasy. Write it off as the ramblings of the clinically insane. Call it an unbridled attempt to undermine the American presidency. Say, if you will, that there are some people in this world who will never believe that we held a free and fair election last November and that, somehow, Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin did not win. Call it what you like, but what drives the so-called “birther” movement is nothing short of racism in its purest form. I’m not playing the “race card”. 

I’m tossing all 52 cards on the table. Face up.

Some of us thought the conspiracy theories surrounding President Barack Obama’s birth would die a quick and quiet death.  We were wrong. 

In the age of 24 hour news cycles, citizen journalism, basement bloggers, and social media fueled by the Internet, ugly rumors that Obama was born in Kenya has caught on like a California wildfire.  And it isn’t just the talk of right-wing fringe groups.  Never mind that the entire fairytale has been debunked by every relevant government organization in the State of Hawaii and that Obama was vetted by the Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation to receive his national security clearance.  Never mind that two birth announcements appeared in Hawaii newspapers within days of his birth.  Never mind that he has provided a Certificate of Live Birth issued by Hawaii or that he obtained his well worn passport with that certified document. 

Never mind that the McCain campaign, grasping for oxygen, looked into the issue and came up with nothing.

The story lives on in nightly newscasts and on daily radio talk shows.  Anything for a buck, right?

FACT: Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu on August 4, 1961.

Let me say this.  If there were one scintilla of truth to the claim that President Obama was actually born in Kenya, the American media would be all over it.  There would be a cavalcade of reporters lined up at the White House gates demanding answers.   Chris Matthews, Shep Smith, Anderson Cooper, Katie Couric and even Bill O’Reilly would be tearing their hair out.  Keith Olbermann would be howling at the moon and screaming Armageddon.  Imagine the Congressional hearings, the wall to wall coverage of the Constitutional crisis, and the protestors lining the streets gnashing their teeth. Imagine the indictments for fraud and treason.  Ken Starr would be brought out of retirement.  Wolff Blitzer would be on the air right now along with at least ten political analysts and a hologram. 

The “birthers” would have us believe that Hawaiian officials, including a sitting Republican governor, are all involved in the biggest conspiracy of our lifetime.  They would have you believe that President Obama’s mother so desperately wanted her son to be an American (and didn’t want to pay for an immigration attorney), that she, her parents and hospital officials lied to obtain a birth certificate and went a step further to place those birth announcements.  Why?
Because, of course, they knew that he would one day become president. 

The “birthers” would have you to believe that out of the billions of people who have inhabited these United States in its history, that those (and it must be said) white people believed that baby Barack (of mixed racial heritage and less than humble beginnings) would one day become one of only 43 men who would ascend to the Oval Office.  Certainly, in 1961 in the age before Dr. Martin Luther King when Jim Crow was still the law of the land, no one could possibly harbor that level of insanity. 

My mother gave birth to my older sister Lori in a segregated hospital that year and had been previously turned away from the polling booth. Incredibly, according to Research 2000, some 28 percent of Republicans actually believe this boiling crock of mess.  But forget the Republicans.  Another 30 percent are so unconvinced that they are willing to jump into the pot with them. Whether in a quest for ratings or readers or because they actually believe it, editors and producers of newspapers, radio and television programs have decided to go with the story.

A few days ago, a forged Kenyan birth certificate emerged and was touted by a correspondence school educated lawyer.  Why she was given two seconds of airtime, I don’t know.  The “document” was quickly discredited based on a number of facts, including the fact that Kenya did not actually become a “Republic”—as noted on the forgery-- for three years after the date of the Barack Obama’s birth.

Be a racist if you choose, but don’t be stupid.

The goal here is clear: delegitimize the Obama presidency.  Why?  He isn’t “one of us”, they tried to tell us during the election.  He “pals around with terrorists” as Sarah Palin was so eager to tell us.  He “won’t defend America”, the GOP leadership keeps saying. He’s a “secret Muslim” who wants to read enemy combatants their Miranda Rights, they press.  He wants to “socialize medicine” and “take away our guns”. 

Poppycock!

What they really want to say is that he is black.  What they really want to say is we’re scared a black man will take away all that we white Americans built.  Of course, they forget that African Americans contributed mightily and, for hundreds of years, unwillingly to what is the greatest testament to democracy on the face of the planet.  Yes, Pat Buchanan, we fought at Vicksburg for the Union and there’s a monument to prove it. We built the White House with our own hands, slaved in the cotton fields, and fed and nursed little white babies who would one day become president. Open heart surgery, the stop light, everything made from peanuts.  The list of our achievements as a people could in the name of this union could paper a highway from here to Tokyo and back again.

President Barack Obama is American.  And so am I. 

I resent the very idea that anyone, no matter their color, ethnicity or religion, would challenge that fact.  I resent, as a former Marine, that I am any less American because of my skin color.

So who are these “birthers”?  They are more than just a band of “confused and frightened people” as Washington Post editorial writer Eugene Robinson contends.  They are dangerous.  Their so-called movement gives justification to any gun-toting, bomb making whacko that would make an attempt on our president’s life.  Any soldier, from general to private, would have license to disobey a so-called “unlawful order” from their commander-in-chief—as at least one general attempted to do already. A foreign power could refuse him and any of his emissaries. In fact, every order from his unworthy pen would be delegitimized.

According to one news anchor, since the president did not undergo the naturalization process, he must be (gasp) an undocumented, illegal alien. I’ve frankly had enough of the monkey cartoons and racially charged e-mails sent by public officials. I’ve had enough of the assaults on the Obama children and his wife Michelle. As a country, we’ve got big problems and we’ve got to deal with them--right now.  Have I mentioned that I don’t have health insurance and my own gas tank is on “E”? 

When will this end?  In a word: Never.

There are simply some people who will never accept an African American as president, no matter what he achieves. For them, skin color is the only indicator they need to deem him unfit for service to this country.Fight about healthcare, scrap about Supreme Court nominees, and disagree with him about bank and auto industry bailouts (I do).  But to continue to toss grease on this brush fire with almost assuredly guarantees a Republican party that wanders in the wilderness for at least another generation. Not that I’d be unhappy about that.

President Barack Obama was, in fact, made in America. Rather than celebrating what the incredible testament that is to our democracy, we’re stuck debating his birthright.  Now how un-American is that?

Goldie Taylor is the CEO of Goldie Taylor Omnimedia based in Atlanta.