Allen Johnson: If birther blather clouds our heads so easily, what hope is there for health care?
A sizeable number of North Carolinians still believe Barack Obama was not born in the United States, a new survey reveals.
More Republicans question the president's citizenship than Democrats, and more white voters than black ones.
During the same week, this impassioned e-mail arrived from Charlotte: "More and more American people are seeing they have been sold a bill of false goods. There are many things people should know about who this Hope and Change figurine is besides, with certainty, where he was born."
Geez Louise.
Of course, the survey, released last week by Public Policy Polling Research, also finds that some respondents don't consider Hawaii part of the United States.
And we wonder why some people believe proposed health care reform will include "Death Panels."
For the record, the survey of 749 North Carolina voters between Aug. 4 and 10 found:
l 54 percent believe the president was born in the United States.
l 26 percent believe he is a not a U.S. citizen.
l 20 percent said they did not know.
l 5 percent said they didn't consider Obama's birthplace of record, Hawaii, part of the U.S.
l 3 percent said they weren't sure if it was.
Adding insult to ignorance, some elected officials have done little to erase the renegade rumors and outright fabrications.
Asked about it at a town hall meeting in Lincolnton, North Carolina Congressman Patrick McHenry said he still had his doubts about the president's citizenship.
"I haven't seen enough evidence one way or another," McHenry said.
McHenry, a Republican, added that the issue was still being addressed "in the courts," which it was not. The Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal questioning Obama's citizenship status in December 2008.
Thankfully, McHenry later "clarified" his comments in a statement released the next morning. "As I stated last night," he said, "I have not carefully reviewed the evidence as a jurist would. However, from what I have read, I have absolutely no reason to question President Obama's citizenship. I anticipate that as a legal matter the courts will continue to come to the same conclusion."
To their credit, a number of other conservatives have, from the start, discredited continuing attempts to challenge the president's citizenship.
"I may have disagreements with [the president] on issues," South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, a frequent critic of the president's policies, told The Huffington Post. "But he is my president, he deserves our respect, and we need to forget that nonsense.&ellipses; He is not only a citizen, he is our president."
Still, CNN's Lou Dobbs and a few others keep drifting off into Conspiracy Land, questioning Obama's citizenship and demanding a birth certificate (which already has been produced) as proof.
This, despite a report by Dobbs' own network that concluded Obama's citizenship is authentic.
But consider, for a moment, that the Truth Really Is Out There, and President Obama actually did fake his citizenship.
Wouldn't that have to mean:
l That a daily newspaper in Hawaii, the Honolulu Advertiser, was complicit in the deception, since it published the birth announcement on Sunday, Aug. 13, 1961?
l That somebody counterfeited the birth certificate presented by the Obama campaign as proof, once rumors began to swirl in 2008?
l That the director of Hawaii's Department of Health, who confirmed on Oct. 31 that Obama was born in Honolulu, also is in on the ruse?
l And that, if this fakery indeed dates back to 1961, someone knew, four years before the passage of the Voting Rights Act, that this child of a mixed-race couple someday was going to run for president (space aliens, maybe?) and hatched an elaborate plot to make it happen?
The problem, of course, extends beyond Obama. It also transcends political ideologies.
For instance, there are people who, to this day, believe George W. Bush was behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Too many of us seem far too willing to embrace sometimes even the flimsiest of deceptions if they feed our fears or reinforce preconceived world views.
If something as simple as the president's citizenship can be sabotaged by such absurd concoctions, what hope can there be for a topic as genuinely daunting and complex as health care reform?
We can be smarter than this.
We can do better than this.
We can fix health care with an informed, constructive dialogue.
Or we can fiddle with myths and legends, while Rome burns.
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