The Birther Movement Won’t Go Away, and for Good Reason

Earl Ofari Hutchinson

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs got it right when he bluntly said that the deal is that the legions who are adamant that President Obama is an illegal alien and should be dumped from the White House will never go away. Not only won’t they go away but in recent weeks they’ve gained even more steam, and they’ve got it ironically with the unintended help of birther opponents. Every newspaper, magazine, talk show host that damns the birthers as a bunch of wacky, paranoid, Obama haters stirs the pot even more. They do it simply by acknowledging the issue with a column or a show. The birthers revel in that, and they should because there’s a canny, calculated,and politically cynical motive behind their Obama birth certificate agitation.

The clamor for Obama to produce his original birth document gained a noisy following long before the final presidential vote tally was in last November. It started the instant that he declared his presidential candidacy in February 2007. Take your pick: He was too black. He was not patriotic enough. He was too liberal, too effete, too untested. He was a Muslim, terrorist fellow traveler, and a closet black radical. The shock of an Obama in the White House was simply too much for many to bear. Obama defied the stereotypical textbook look and definition of what an American president was supposed to look like, and be like; namely a wooden image middle-aged, or older, white male.

Obama inadvertently gave ammunition to the incipient birthers during a campaign stop in late July 2007 when he quipped that he did not look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills. Obama got torched for saying the obvious and that was that his candidacy was different. Obama later admitted that it was a racial reference. The off the cuff remark simply reinforced the point that he and his candidacy marked a turning point in U.S. presidential politics and by extension race relations.

The Obama birth certificate hounders kicked their rumor mongering campaign against him into even higher gear when some mainstream papers found the birth certificate controversy good copy and grist to get the tongues wagging. The birthers spotted the opening and crudely cloaked themselves in the mantle of public spirited citizens and legal experts with no personal, political, let alone racial, ax to grind with Obama. Their sole goal they claimed was to insure electoral truth and accuracy, to make sure that all the legal requirements for holding a presidential office are met, and to head off a constitutional crisis. They even promised that they would put the matter to rest if Obama simply produced the original.

That was a lie. The birthers with an open boost from GOP ultra conservatives led by House Rep John Campbell and other House members who are pushing a bill that requires all future presidential candidates to produce their original birth certificates. That, of course, would apply to Obama as well when he presumably runs for reelection in 2012. The real value of the Birther movement is that it’s a tailored back door movement that can be used to destabilize, or at the least keep the Obama administration off balance on policy initiatives he’s pushing on health care, the economy, and a softer foreign policy outreach. They are fierce opponents of them.

Since Obama’s inauguration dozens of You Tube clips have been churned out on the controversy, legions of websites continue to recycle the rumor line about his certificate, and a mountain size stack of articles rehash the issue of whether the birth certificate that Hawaii produced is legit. More than two dozen lawsuits or petitions have been filed in various state courts contesting Obama’s U.S. citizenship (one of them was filed by political gadfly Alan Keyes). The Supreme’s Court’s refusal to demand that Obama pony up his birth certificate has done absolutely nothing to take any steam out of the movement. If anything, it probably added some vapor to it, by convincing more that the Courts or in cahoots with the Obama White House to keep the real “truth” about his imagined foreign birth secret from the American people.

The worst thing about the controversy over Obama’s birth certificate is not that CNN’s Lou Dobbs has latched onto the issue for ratings and to make mischief against Obama. Or that others in the media have even dignified the controversy by treating it as if it’s a legitimate issue. The worst thing is that none have connected the dots and seen the birthers as the shock troops to torpedo Obama’s political agenda. Their hope is that by sowing enough conspiracy paranoia about him they can do just that.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, “The Hutchinson Report” can be heard on weekly in Los Angeles at 9:30 AM Fridays on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and live streamed nationally on ktym.com

Norris’s Nutty War on President Obama

Earl Ofari Hutchinson


Chuck Norris claims that thousands of right wing cell groups exist and will rebel against the U.S. government. It’s tempting to laugh away his vow to wage war against President Obama as either the crackpot ravings of a washed up Z grade martial arts actor. Or as a cheap promotional stunt to get his mug back in front of the cameras. Norris’s bellicose rants against Obama are nothing new and they have gotten wide play in a shrill horde of on line blogs and websites, including the popular right wing sounding board WorldNet Daily.com. Norris will culminate his holy war against Obama with a big recruiting pitch in a live telecast scheduled appropriately for Friday the 13th (March). He’ll call on thousands to “surround” Obama and the dark forces that seek to subvert God, country, and liberty.
Unfortunately, Norris will have plenty of recruits. Two weeks before he bellowed his anti-Obama tripe, the Southern Poverty Law Center once more sounded its own warning that hate groups are on the rise. There are now nearly a thousand of them, and they’re in just about every state. They aren't just the catalogue of usual suspects--- neo-Confederates, neo-Nazis, skinheads, Klansman, Aryan nation and Skinheads that exclusively roam around the Deep South. They’re all over. California leads the pack with nearly 100 identifiable groups. The Center fingered several dozen websites from the explicit Ihateobama.com site to groups with flag draped names like the sovereign citizen’s movement.
Then there’s the legion of sites that busily spewed anti-Obama venom before the election and haven’t missed a beat since.

AntiObama.net A Clockwork Obama AgainstObama.com AudacityOfHypocrisy.com BlockBarack.com ChicagoAgainstObama.com DiscoverObama.com DontVoteObama.net DrNObama.com ExposeObama.com InvestigateBarackObama.blogspot.com JewsAgainstObama.com JustSayNoDeal.com MeetBarackObama.com No-bama.blogspot.com NobamaNetwork.com NobamaZone.com NoExperienceNoChange.org NoQuarterUSA.net ObamaExposed.blogspot.com ObamaBlog08.com Obama-Wire.com Obamaism.Blogspot.com ObamaNation.com ObamaTruth.org ObamaWho.wordpress.com ObamaWTF.blogspot.com Obamology.blogspot.com SavagePolitics.com SlickBarry.com Stop-Obama.org TheRealBarackObama.wordpress.com TopShelf51.wordpress.com

The majority of the hate groups and the wacky anti-Obama websites are like Norris just hot air talk and delusional conspiracy stuff. They all hotly deny that they advocate violence. Yet, the number of hate crimes according to FBI statistics, and that’s real violent crimes, edged up to over 7000 in 2007. The number of these crimes has been fairly consistent since the FBI began compiling hate crime statistics more than a decade ago. They’re just the tip of the hate iceberg. Experts say the number of hate crimes could be ten times higher since most hate crimes go unreported.
But even that in itself might not be cause for alarm since most of the hate groups are well known, tracked, and when their members commit crimes are hit hard with federal prosecutions. It certainly would not be enough to give much credence to Norris’s crackpot call. That is if times were better. But when jobs and homes are lost, and there’s fear and uncertainty that things could get worse, the ruthless search for scapegoats—illegal immigrants, gays, Jews, blacks, and a history making president—are on with a vengeance. It takes little imagination to see that this could set off one emotionally unscrewed, gun culture obsessed looney. The murderous rampage by Alabama shooter Michael McLendon who was hell bent on wiping out a whole town was ample proof of that.
Norris, and the legion of other right side gassers and bloggers, mask their bigot tinged appeals to the mob with the usual wink and nod patriotic sounding code words, slogans, and phrases. In his WorldNetDaily columns, Norris tosses out gems such as the “second American revolution,” “new government,” the authority of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence,” “threat to religious freedom,” and “protect and save free enterprise” in his call for a citizen rising against President Obama.
The acidic dripping slogans just happen to be the same ones that stir the deep fury, hatred and resentment among a handful of the loose hinged malcontents and hate mongers. As has been amply documented, the thick list of fringe and hate groups as well as the hordes of unbalanced violence prone individuals running free in America can fill a telephone book. The long history of hate violence in America further is more than enough to raise the antenna on the danger of violence against prominent political figures.

Obama well knows the horrid violent history of America and the very real danger that violence poses to many Americans and especially a charismatic president who still energizes and excites millions and is determined to deliver on his promise of political change and implicitly racial change. The exact things that drives Norris nuts and many others that are nuts to cheer him.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is How Obama Won (Middle Passage Press, January 2009).

Did Obama Really Torpedo Immigration Reform?
Earl Ofari Hutchinson

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain made a curious charge through a spokesperson immediately after his talk before the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials conference in Arlington, Virginia. He flatly said that his Democratic rival Barack Obama helped torpedo the immigration reform bill in the Senate in June 2007. This is a serious even inflammatory charge. It probably won’t do much to hurt Obama’s standing among the majority of Latino elected officials and core Latino Democrats. Polls show that the overwhelming majority of them back him. But it could stir more murmurs among some about his credentials as the change advocate on economic and foreign policy matters, and that includes immigration reform. Worse, it could raise even more doubts among rank and file Latino voters about Obama’s willingness to go to the mat on immigration reform. This would be a disaster for him. Latino voter support is absolutely crucial in Obama’s drive to bag the White House.
In the 2004 presidential election, Bush got nearly forty percent of the Latino vote. Without those votes Democrat John Kerry would have won the White House.
It not just the Latino votes that Bush got and Obama and McCain are clawing to get. It's where the Latino votes come from that could cinch the victory for Obama or McCain. The greatest numbers of Latino voters are in California, Florida, Texas and New York, Illinois and New Jersey. These are the key electoral states that virtually determine who will sit in the White House for years to come.

This much is clear in looking back at the Senate immigration debate in the spring 2007, Obama did vote for five amendments dubbed “poison pill” amendments. They badly threw out of whack the carefully crafted, but always fragile, compromise package that Democrats and Republicans cobbled together to get a bill passed. The Amendments lowered the visa quota for guest workers, put a severe time limit on the temporary guest worker program, and the temporary worker visa programs, revised the system for evaluating immigrant citizenship claims, and changed the time limit on the renewal of visas for some immigrants.
The amendments were backed by liberal and labor groups. The intent was to make the bill more expansive, balanced, and fair. But it was also the classic case of noble intent clashing with political practicality and a very tenuous Senate Democrat and Republican consensus on the type of immigration reform bill that realistically could pass, and that Bush would sign. The amendments predictably were rejected. Both Senator Ted Kennedy and McCain turned thumbs down on them (McCain did not vote on one of the amendments). The time delay, energy expended and wasted debating the amendments (and others), upset the delicate balance and helped dig the hole deeper for the bill.
Though Hillary Clinton and other top Senate Democrats also backed the amendments, they didn’t draw much fire for it. They are hard line partisan Democrats who make little pretense about voting anything other than a straight party line on legislation or amendments to legislation that labor and liberal advocacy groups solidly back.
But Obama claimed to be different than them. The amendment debacle drew a mild knock that Obama had betrayed his oft stated promise to elevate his head above petty, narrow party politics and be a bi-partisan consensus builder. This means that he will be the one to smash through the dead end morass of party squabbling and Congressional paralysis to move things along in Washington. The paralysis has drawn the disgust and fury of millions of voters and earned Congress approval ratings that wallow every bit in the historic low depths as Bush’s approval ratings
The immigration reform bill killing amendments, and Obama’s vote on them, give McCain the hook he needs to lambaste Obama as an immigration reform spoiler. Worse, it allows him to try to plant the idea among some Latino voters that if Obama can’t be trusted to do what it takes to get immigration reform through, than why expect him to do what it takes on other issues such as affordable health care that are vital to Latinos.
Though the crowd at the NALEO conference publicly and enthusiastically chanted Obama’s name, privately he had a nervous moment. In a behind the scenes meeting with more than a dozen Latino leaders he reportedly was pressed to spell out exactly where he stood on immigration. Some also weren’t too thrilled that in the past Obama sounded every bit as tough as the anti-immigration hawks in backing a border fence. Immigration reform advocates vehemently oppose the fence.
Despite the vigorous cheers among Latino elected officials for Obama and the near certainty that he’ll net the big percentage of Latino votes, it still doesn’t mean that the Latino vote is not a bit of an X factor for him. Unfortunately, it won’t help that Obama now will be called to answer for what he did or didn’t do when it came to help make immigration reform a reality.