Friday, July 31, 2009

Maher on the Birthers - and finding the levers on the loons

Maher is right that we can't keep laughing at the Birthers. They're almost mainstream now in the American south, and they claim the allegiance of a very substantial fraction of the broken shards of what was once a respectable political party...
'Birthers' must be stopped - Los Angeles Times
... once these stories get out there, they're hard to stamp out because our media do such a lousy job of speaking truth to stupid. Vietnam, Iraq and the Spanish-American War were all sold on lies that were unchallenged or even abetted by the media. Clinton got impeached and Kerry got destroyed in large part because the media didn't have the guts to say, 'This is nonsense.'

Lou Dobbs has been saying recently that people are asking a lot of questions about the birth certificate. Yes, the same people who want to know where the sun goes at night.

And Lou, you're their new king.

That's why it's so important that we the few, the proud, the reality-based attack this stuff before it has a chance to fester and spread. This isn't a case of Democrats versus Republicans. It's sentient beings versus the lizard people...
So what do we do about it? By definition the Birthers are beyond reason. What do you do when a significant fraction of your nation is crazy?

Maybe we need to start working on the advertisers who are paying the bills of people like Lou Dobbs. A boycott of any advertisers shown during a Dobbs appearance perhaps?

We are in such deep trouble as a nation. I still don't understand how the heck we merited Obama.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The birthers are a symptom of a much larger problem: a very well funded and very well organized campaign to delegitimize non-Republican leaders.

"Scandals" like Whitewater, the death of Vince Foster, and Obama's birth certificate don't take root among the trailer trash by themselves. They were deliberately astroturfed into the white trash community specifically to poison the public discourse. Exposing and shutting down the channels used by right wing billionaires and business interests to make the white trash dance is vital to break the stranglehold GOP talking points have on the political process.

Cutting down the birthers is necessary but the ultimate goal must be to cut the strings between the white trash/crazy right and the wealthy right.