Forged Obama Birth Certificate, Joe Arpaio? Seriously?

COMMENTARY | OK, everyone, I’m going to tell you a secret. Lean in. Gather ’round, I’m going to whisper. President Barack Obama was born in … Hawaii.

Yep. Hawaii. But what about what that sheriff in Arizona says? No, not the one who just came out as gay and allegedly threatened his Latino boyfriend with deportation if he told anyone. No, the one who turned his jail pink, Joe Arpaio. He’s claiming, according to the Associated Press, that the President’s birth certificate may be “forged.” That he’s facing his own investigation regarding alleged civil rights abuses, in addition to the grand jury investigating possible abuse of power surely has nothing to with this pronouncement.

Let’s talk about this “investigation” for what it is. It is racism. I hear the raising of indignant hackles of indignant people who hope that this news is true, but also firmly refuse to think of themselves as “racist.” Well today’s as good a day as any for self-realization.

Anyone who would buy this lunacy for even a second, who weighs it as though it had a shred of validity, doesn’t want the president to be president. We’re not talking about side-of-the-aisle differences here, because this is an attack on the man himself, on the very basis of his existence: his birth.

It is a little about identity, saying “You are not who you say you are. You are who we say you are.” It’s a little about incredulousness, a disbelief that this man could be everything he appears to be, because that runs contrary to a script inside. And it’s about a desire to believe that this frontier has not really been breached, that an African-American man is not really the president, and so it never happened.

Contrast the treatment of Obama on this fantastical “Birth Certificate Issue” and John McCain, who was actually born outside the United States. The question was raised, scholars debated, and the nation shrugged. No one’s talking about it now, four years later. And yet the idea persists that Obama’s citizenship is somehow tainted, that an “out” exists that will make this presidency not so.

Well, it is so. And all the wishin’ and hopin’ and thinkin’ and prayin’ in the world isn’t going to make it not so. So get over it.

Here’s another truth for those of you angered for reasons you can’t quite define. Even invalidating this presidency does not fix your problem. Barack Obama is not the only person with dark skin who will sit in the Oval Office; he is merely the first. Rage against it, like a moth against a light fixture, because eventually you will tire yourselves out and realize this nation has changed. A black man is president, and there are no backsies.


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