President Obama celebrated his 53rd birthday last week. At least, that’s what they want us to think.
The birther website WorldNetDaily is not exactly celebrating President Obama’s birthday [last] week, insisting that since his birth certificate is fake, he probably is lying about how old he is, too.In his column yesterday, “Obama Turned 53 — Or Did He?,” Jack Cashill writes that Obama is not telling the truth about not only his birth place, but also about the year he was born. The WorldNetDaily reporter cites a 2007 speech Obama delivered in Selma, Alabama, about how his “existence might not have been possible had it not been for some of the folks here today.” Obama was born in 1961, while the Selma to Montgomery march occurred in 1965.
Sure, common sense suggests the president was talking about the civil rights movement in general, not literally the events in Selma four years after he was born, but why give him the benefit of the doubt, right?
There’s obviously no way to take such nonsense seriously, but that’s not why I’m mentioning it. Rather, every time I come across some unintentionally funny story about WorldNetDaily conspiracy theories — I’m still shaking my head over the “blood moon” story from April — I’m reminded of the fact that some in Congress actually consider this website credible.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), for example, has not only explored WND conspiracy theories during congressional hearings, he’s even done interviews with the conspiracy website as if it were just another legitimate news organization.
I suppose it’s possible there were liberal conspiracy websites that might have raised questions about George W. Bush’s birth certificate during his presidency, but how many Democratic members of Congress chose to associate themselves with such outlets?
Norm Ornstein recently asked in a column, “What happens when extremism becomes mainstream?” The answer, I’m afraid, is not yet clear.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."