/ 29 April 2011

Birthers: ‘You can’t argue with these people’

The president of the United States made front-page news this week with an old piece of paper that nearly every American possesses.

Obama released his full birth certificate to the media, trying to finally end a debate over whether he was born in the US and thus legally eligible to serve as president.

“We do not have time for this kind of silliness,” Obama said. “We’ve got better stuff to do. I’ve got better stuff to do.”

Obama released a shorter but equally official certificate when he was running for the presidency three years ago, to counter persistent claims from fringe right-wing figures that he was born in his father’s home country — Kenya — and constitutionally ineligible for America’s highest office.

A small number of the stubborn skeptics, known as Birthers, never accepted the document as proof. Their questions were relegated to the far reaches of American public life until they were taken-up in recent weeks by billionaire Donald Trump, who is traveling the country talking to supporters about a potential presidential campaign against Obama next year.

A recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll showed that nearly 75% of Americans believe Obama was definitely or probably born in the US. But more than four in 10 Republicans believe he probably or definitely was not.

Now there are two official documents that attest to the fact that Barack Hussein Obama was born August 4 1961 in Honolulu, in the US state of Hawaii. But it’s not clear that they’ll end the debate.

“This is a conspiracy theory and conspiracy theories are beliefs unmolested by facts,” said CNN analyst Jeffrey Toobin. “You can’t argue with these people. I mean, if you confront them with one fact they’ll find other facts.”

The fundamental fact may be that Obama is different in obvious ways from anyone else who’s ever occupied the Oval Office.

He is America’s first African-American president; his middle name reflects his father’s Muslim heritage; he was born on a South Pacific island and part of his youth was spent in Indonesia.

But Americans did elect Barack Obama. Not all of them are happy about it. Some don’t want to accept that it was even legal at the time.