Thursday, July 23, 2009

Conspiracy theory du jour

I will, eventually, be getting back to my series of posts about conspiracy theory and the paranoid style, so here's a short one courtesy of everyone's favourite immigration expert, CNN's Lou Dobbs.

Dobbs has finally gone to the zoo. He is embracing the cause of the "birthers," that small but determined group of conspiracists who believe that Barack Obama was not actually born in the United States and therefore is not actually president. This in spite of the fact that the authenticity of Obama's Hawaii birth certificate has been verfied again and again and again--but then of course, each new independent confirmation merely adds to the evidence of a massive conspiracy to cover up the truth.

With Lou Dobbs' tacit endorsement of the birthers' claims, they have gained what is in conspiracy-land the brass ring--official recognition from a prominent media source, who by merely mentioning their cause lends it legitimacy.

Many have expressed dismay and surprise at Dobbs' endorsement of this fringe group, but frankly I'm hardly shocked. Dobbs has been a vociferous opponent of anything resembling amnesty for illegal immigrants and has devoted large chunks of airtime to denouncing immigration of both the legal and illegal varieties. I think that the very idea that the president is effectively an illegal immigrant has tripped something deep in the primal sectors of his brain.

To sum up the absurdity of it all however, I leave it to the master:

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