Will Sarah Palin Denounce Joseph Farah and the Birthers?

Earlier this week, I wrote about my refusal to link to Wikipedia because it uses “verifiability, not truth” as a standard for assessing the value of information.  But as untrustworthy as I find Wikipedia, it’s infinitely more credible than supposed news site WorldNetDaily, the unofficial online headquarters of the birther movement.

Masquerading as a news organization, WND peddles conspiracy theory as fact.  The company has sponsored Where’s the Birth Certificate? billboards and published hundreds of articles questioning Barack Obama’s constitutional eligibility to serve as president.

WND founder and editor-in-chief Joseph Farah is essentially a cult leader, encouraging his followers in their crazy-eyed obsession with President Obama’s birth certificate and furnishing them with whatever tinder he can manufacture to fuel the birther fire.  Farah’s nagging demands for Obama to produce his “long-form” birth certificate have destroyed any credibility he may have once had.

Friday night, Farah serenaded his cult of birthers during a dinnertime speech at the Tea Party Convention in Nashville.

Farah started fine — heaping praise on the constitution, and urging America’s leaders to be faithful to it. He ended well, too, with a stirring exhortation to “take the offence in this struggle.”

But these flourishes were merely the bread in a lunacy sandwich — the filling of which were 10 solid minutes implicitly questioning whether Barack Obama is an American citizen. In 2012, he declared, every single election lawn sign should say: Show me the birth certificate.

Seen in the best possible light (and I’m being very generous), birthers are a group of people who simply cannot reconcile Barack Obama’s American citizenship with policies and beliefs they perceive as fundamentally un-American.  The cognitive dissonance is too much to bear, causing them to become unhinged eligibility truthers.

Or they’re guano crazy. Take your pick.

Either way, the culture of conspiracy promoted by the birthers should be unequivocally rejected by every mainstream conservative.  And right now, the best woman for the job is Sarah Palin.

Palin is delivering the keynote address at the Tea Party Convention Saturday night.   This is a perfect opportunity to put principle before politics. With just a few carefully chosen words, she can distance herself and the tea party movement from Joseph Farah’s distracting cult of birtherism, once and for all.

A chance like this won’t come again. Will she take it?

Published by Jenn Q. Public on February 6, 2010 at 2:51 am

Filed Under Conservatism, Sarah Palin

Comments

2 Responses to “Will Sarah Palin Denounce Joseph Farah and the Birthers?”

  1. True colors ... on February 6th, 2010 4:00 am

    The true colors of the wingnuts show right through. Birthers aren’t the fringe, they’re the mainstream of republican thought and Princess Palin is their goddess. She is manipulating the psycho repubs just like she manipulates her daughter and her daughter’s two babies. The birthers are her people.

  2. Peter on February 6th, 2010 4:19 pm

    “…her daughter and her daughter’s two babies.”

    I see the Trig Troofer Andrew Sullivan is trying to hide behind a cloak of anonymity. Anyone who actually believes that Trig is Bristol’s baby, not Sarah’s needs to be involuntarily committed. Same with 9/11 Troofer.

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