Friday, July 27, 2012

Obama and the lunatic fringe

There are Obama doubters and haters out there who claim with righteous anger that they are “vetting” the president, something they say the mainstream media never did. Some of them have said that my new biography — unwittingly, they argue, for I am too dumb to understand what my research has unearthed — proves that Barack Obama’s defining memoir is phony and that his entire life is a fraud. My intent is not to defend Obama or his book; he can take care of himself, and I have my own questions about “Dreams From My Father,” which I make clear in my book. But when comparing the liberties Obama took with composite characters and compressed chronology — which he acknowledged in the introduction to his memoir — to the stretches his most virulent detractors have taken in building their various conspiracies, I believe that they are the frauds and fabricators.

Not all of them are “birthers,” but the notion that the president was not born in the United States remains at the epicenter of the anti-Obama mythology. Here is the conspiracy that would have had to exist if Barack Hussein Obama II were not born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on Aug. 4, 1961:
Read the rest here.

As longtime readers of this blog will know I have little use for Mr. Obama's politics. But I have less for the right-wing conspiracy nuts out there who think he is the anti-Christ or something similar.

1 comment:

Visibilium said...

I'm fine with the birther controversy. Interestingly, Donald Trump is the only guy who got anywhere in this area. Everyone else has been just flapping in the breeze.

Maraniss may think he's being more efficient in employing a scattershot approach in refuting birthers generally, but I'd be interested in knowing his specific disagreements with Sheriff Joe Arpaio's Cold Case Posse. Further, I'd be interested in knowing why Maraniss thinks that his investigative findings are superior to the Posse's.