LITTLE ROCK — Ihave a second cousin who in his bachelor days became an amateur scholar of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He had read all the foundational texts of the field, and could discuss everything from the possibility of a second shooter on the grassy knoll to the relative likelihood that Sam Giancana, Carlos the Jackal, Lyndon Johnson or all three were involved.
It often seemed as if there was only one thing he could say for sure about this field of study: We would never know for certain what happened that day in Dallas.
My own deeply held belief was that, whether you were a lone-gunman enthusiast or convinced that the Trilateral Commission was behind the whole thing, talking about this stuff definitely made the summer afternoon pass pleasantly while enjoying a few beers on the back porch of his lakeside cottage.
As a journalist, I do my best to venerate the careful collection of facts as a way to understand the world. But I'll admit to getting a certain aesthetic charge out of a loony yet durable conspiracy theory.
Which brings me to the Birthers. I began hearing from Birthers about a year ago, just before the Democratic convention.
Of course, they weren't called Birthers back then-they were just a loose collection of people who thought Barack Obama was born in Kenya instead of Hawaii, and is therefore ineligible to hold the office he currently occupies.
A smaller subgroup argues that even if he was born in Hawaii, Obama gave up his citizenship when he lived in Indonesia as a youth. An even smaller subgroup argues that even if he was born in Hawaii, he isn't a "natural-born" citizen because his father'sdual Kenyan-British citizenship somehow makes him ineligible.
This last argument was particularly daunting to me: At the time of my birth (in Buffalo, I swear) my mother was a Canadian citizen, an accident of parentage that would therefore mean I could never become president. And that would be your loss, America.
I've had a number of e-mail exchanges with one prominent Birther who has fallen into the habit of sending me a message every time he files another court document in his ongoing citizen lawsuit against the Department of State, the FBI and numerous other federal agencies, plus the Jesuits. (Don't ask.) I actually spent a contentious half-hour on the phone with him just before Election Day, trying to see just how far this string would play out.
But it doesn't really matter which Birther argument you choose. There's a scaffolding of paranoia to support all of them, and they've hardened into dogma to the point that no amount of documentation can tear it all down. Like the myths surrounding the Kennedy assassination, the arguments made by the Birthers are impossible to disprove-not because they aren't bogus, but because the movement won't recognize any documentary evidence as genuine and unassailable. Anything that counters their argument is a mendacious forgery; anything that lends credence to it is immediately taken as gospel.
The Birther movement has become a self-perpetuating machine spinning out reams of text and spoken word. For anybody who hates or fears Obama, the movement is a protective cocoon far away from the confusing world of policy and politics. Why talk about the details of health care policy or what's to be done in Afghanistan when you can invalidate the president in one fell swoop?
Editorial, Pages 16 on 08/26/2009