“Look we let you have jesse and we didn’t birther him. We let Al go too. For gods sake: If other black candidates are not “birthered” then there is plausible deniability for the movement to not be racist. If you would just open your minds.”
I sometimes think that, given the sad state of general historical and geographical knowledge, some birthers have decided that Hawaii isn’t an integral part of the country, or at least was not when Barack Obama was born there. I mean, they’re thinking “HI became a state when…1959? 1962? Oh, oh oh! Look! Obama was born in 1961, so … not a native born American!”.
Even just recently a federal district judge in HI was derided as “a judge in some island in the Pacific”, suggesting they still don’t get it.
The point is, they grasp at this fallacious straw, as well as the equally fallacious notion that Obama was born in Kenya, as a way to deligitimize him. And in the end I do believe it’s all about race. If Obama were white, but born in Kenya, say to parents who were active in evangelical missionary work, they wouldn’t even bring Kenya up.
From Dan Quayle :
Hawaii has always been a very pivotal role in the Pacific. It is in the Pacific. It is a part of the United States that is an island that is right here.