Randi Rhodes: Bad Day for Racists

Today the President of the United States released his long-form birth certificate (video below). There’s not a lot to the official certificate of live birth. But then there’s nothing at all to all the controversy surrounding it. The President gave the birthers what they’ve been asking for. Of course he didn’t them what they wanted. What they really wanted was for this birth certificate not to exist.

It’s easy to see why the President refused for so long to release the long-form certificate—because nobody would have been asking for it if his name had been O’Brien instead of Obama. A black man with an exotic-sounding name needs to provide extra documentation to prove he’s an American, just like a black man pulled over on a routine traffic stop has to submit to searches that wouldn’t be conducted if he was white. This is like a Presidential version of the Arizona immigration law—essentially these birthers saw a black man in the Oval Office, and they demanded to see his papers. In one sense, the White House giving in and releasing the certificate is like giving in to racism, which should not be done. But in another sense it’s like acknowledging that racism exists, which has to be done.

Of course Donald Trump is trying to take credit for the fact that the long form birth certificate was released. He shouldn’t be taking credit, he should be taking blame. Trump said “I am really honored to have played such a big role in hopefully getting rid of this issue.” OK, two things—it’s not an issue. And you didn’t get rid of it. This “issue” is a stinking mess, Donald, and you got it on your shoes and tracked it all over the floor until somebody was finally forced to do something about it. Still, Donald says he feels “honored.” Well, maybe that’s what a person feels when everybody is looking at them, and they are somehow incapable of feeling shame. Just a couple days ago, Donald Trump was saying that he had inside information that the long-form certificate was “missing.” Yeah. Evidently somebody at the department of records in Hawaii had taken it to the photocopying machine to send a copy off to the President.

Today President Obama said we need to ignore the “sideshows and carnival barkers.” The birthers are worse than carnival barkers. Carnival barkers try to get people to look at the freak show. These people ARE the freak show.

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