I received this article from my cousin, I'm posting it in it's entirety. I came away with a massive stomach ache and head ache...you would think I'd be used to the extremists on the Right after 4 years of listening to their filthy trashing of our President and his family. But no, it still makes me sick, it still leaves me speechless and it still scares me to read what they are capable of. They really are evil mother fuckers and I hate them with every inch of my being...
Again With the Birthers, Neo-birthers and Right-wing Sleaze?
By Joe Conason
As the Obama years unfold, observers who lived through the Clinton era
sometimes have the eerie feeling that they have been here
before—particularly when directing their gaze toward the far right. The
roiling paranoia and hatred that marred American politics when Bill and
Hillary Clinton were in the White House has resurfaced in attacks on
Barack and Michelle Obama, who like the Clintons have been maligned
repeatedly as communist, subversive, satanic and, above all,
illegitimate.
Speaking of illegitimate, the latest assault on the
Obama family is a new movie purporting to show that the president's
father was not Barack Hussein Obama Sr., but an African-American radical
and poet named Frank Marshall Davis. There is no more substance to this
claim than that the president was actually born in Kenya and educated
in an Islamist madrassa.
Taken seriously, this "neo-birther"
fable would tend to erode the original "birther" claims. But logic and
proof have no impact on such speculations, whose aim is to profit from
prejudice and extremism.
Consider the source—in this instance, an
individual named Cliff Kincaid, who runs an old extreme-right outfit
called Accuracy in Media and, appropriately, venerates the likes of
Richard Nixon and Joe McCarthy.
The last big plot promoted by
Kincaid was the "bipartisan" scheme to portray the "murder" of Clinton
White House counsel Vince Foster as a suicide. Among the conspirators
fingered by Kincaid in this alleged cover-up was Republican independent
counsel Kenneth Starr, best known for his dogged, intemperate, $50
million effort to remove President Clinton from office.
Now
Kincaid is insinuating that Davis was not merely a left-wing mentor who
somehow transformed Barack Obama into a communist—an old theory that
first surfaced in 2004—but Obama's actual father, too. To Kincaid, the
influence of Davis, who died 25 years ago, explains why Obama has
pursued policies such as universal health coverage (although Accuracy in
Media has yet to investigate how the communists duped Romney into that
Massachusetts health plan).
Kincaid recently appeared to promote a
movie and book based on these claims on a Secure Freedom Radio show
hosted by Fred Grandy, a former Republican congressman who played Gopher
on "The Love Boat." (I couldn't make this up, and neither did People
for the American Way in reporting this news on the website Right Wing
Watch.)
In a revealing exchange, the sophisticated Grandy says:
"I've heard this rumor before—that Frank Marshall Davis was more than
just a surrogate father to Barack Obama; he may well have been this
guy's real father, and Barack Hussein Obama Sr., to some degree, is
merely a minor influence in this kid's life. How much credibility do you
put into that?"
Kincaid replies: "I put a lot into it now that I've seen Joel Gilbert's film; it's called
Dreams From My Real Father.
It's an incredible film. He's going to show excerpts; he's going to
talk about his research. He's expanded upon what we and (author) Paul
Kengor have done, and I think it deserves a fair hearing. Now, whether
or not he was a real father or not, the fact is Frank Marshall Davis has
an influence over our president, and that's the critical issue, but if,
indeed, if he was Obama's real father, and the comparison's photos are
striking, then we've got even more of a mystery behind this guy in the
Oval Office."
The key phrase? "Whether or not he was a real
father or not." The malaprop-prone Kincaid doesn't really care whether
his filmmaker or his author can cite an iota of proof to support these
speculations. They want to smear the president as an illegitimate
Marxist—and in unconscious mimicry of the most dedicated communists,
they behave as if the end justifies the means.
Like
The Clinton Chronicles
video that portrayed the then-president and first lady as murderous
drug-runners (distributed by such respectable figures as the late Jerry
Falwell), the current crop of right-wing propaganda embraces whatever
wild fantasy might provoke fear and rage. And as with what became known
as "Clinton Derangement Syndrome," the insane accusations eventually
infected mainstream discourse, with supposedly sane politicians and
pundits endorsing or simply alluding to the maddest conspiracy theories.
Should Obama win a second term, don't be too surprised when they demand impeachment.
Joe Conason is the editor in chief of NationalMemo.com.
