Haven't Lost My Touch After All

I can still clear a room all by myself. How did I do that? I met up with an honest to God Birther. I probably shouldn't even give that a capital letter since it justifies the argument that Obama was born in Kenya instead of Hawaii. One of our local Colorado politicians called the people who cling to the theory "dumb-asses." He was asked to apologize, which is a pity, because he is right.

Our local newspaper chided the politician and said the people who believe this crazy theory are "sincere"--HAH. In a pig's eye. They may believe (or hope) sincerely he wasn't born in the US, but the insincerity lies in the reasons why they choose to ignore overwhelming evidence to the contrary--some of it my personal observation since I knew Obama's mother slightly from my undergrad days the University of Hawaii.

The birthers purport to be trying to rectify a great wrong--an ineligible man has been elected president. But it's not that at all. They hate him. Now, if they were sincere indeed they'd look at themselves and be honest about why that is so. There have been many Democrat presidents, many liberal leaders, many others who run in fear from the Republicans, who have not generated the level of personal venom Obama has. What is it that has created such a threat to the nation that thse loons don't attack on the many legitimate grounds for attacking any political party in power? What makes Obama such a target?

Well, it's pretty obvious, isn't it? He's from Hawaii for one thing, the newest state and the one the Mainland US is least able to comprehend. Hawaii's ruling culture is heavily Asian and the folks there don't do things the same way. They don't confront one another; instead, as I like to say, they go one floor down and cut the floor out from around your feet and you never know what hit you. I would guess shrewdly that Obama has made his way in Chicago politics by applying a lot of Hawaii--quiet, scandal and confrontation free, highly effective, and not given to blowing his own horn. Good old Hawaii. If you want drama and conflict and winners and losers, Obama wasn't your man--when you elected him, you said you wanted an end to Washington politics--well, deal with it--maybe you didn't after all.

Then there's the fact of his parentage. It was a heck of a brave thing in Hawaii of the early 1960s to mix African and Caucasian. There weren't many Africans to begin with. Obama's father was the first on the campus. I remember about three others later--all from Nigeria, I think. They were glamorous young men, at least one of whom had studied at the London School of Economics, with self-assurance to the point of swagger. Hawaii was intrigued by them, but the marriage was still unusual. It had been only twenty or so years before that the Massey case hit the headlines (look it up on the internet if you don't know). That's why I remember meeting Obama's mother when she was pregnant with him--she had come with his father to a foreign student gathering where Obama senior was talking. I overheard her friends talking about her, worried that in Africa multiple wives were acceptable. I was horrified for her--that's why I remember so clearly.

So, given this background, where I had lived a tiny bit of Obama's story and knew infinitely more about Hawaii than the birther I was confronted with, I took the bait and pointed out where ignorance was intersecting with foreign-phobia. Birthers can't forgive Obama for having a foreign-sounding name and for having a foreign father and a mother who later lived in Indonesia. It's all just too outside mainstream America. Never mind that John McCain was born in the US Panama Canal Zone--my late husband was too and we had to get a State Department Birth Certificate to prove his citizenship. I'm sure McCain has one too. Would the birthers have pursued McCain on this? Doubtful because they agreed with him (at least until he went a bit off message).

The birther left rather suddenly from the gathering where I met him--I can do that to people. Part of my charm, I guess. But the fact remains--the world is moving on. I quote here (from memory so it may be completely accurate) my favorite poem from the Rubiyat: "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on. Nor all your peity nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all your tears wash out a word of it."