Drudge Hypes, Then Disappears, Another ‘Kenyan-Born Obama’ Fail
On the heels of Breitbart.com’s flaming, totally not-Birther failure to convict Barack Obama of claiming to be born in Kenya, The Drudge Report featured another item that threatened to revive the double-tapped controversy over the President’s origins. Drudge featured the headline “AP 2004 FLASHBACK: ‘Kenyan-Born Obama All Set for US Senate’” this morning, but now that everyone knows this was debunked in 2004, there’s no trace of it, or a correction, on his site.
The story in question, as it turns out, was written by the Associated Press, but the “Kenyan-born” line was added by the Kenyan newspaper at the local level. Kudos to conservative blogger Yid with Lid for pointing this out. This garbage was actually debunked in 2009 by Snopes. Yes, Drudge got schooled by the website that also reassures people that Mikey didn’t die from eating Pop Rocks with Coke.
If you needed any further evidence of what liars some of these right-wingers are, look no further than this. Drudge issued no correction, and disappeared it from his site, but it still exists on other sites that archive Drudge’s feed. Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft at least had the relative decency to add a tiny update at the bottom of his post which read “The headline was added by a Kenyan paper,” while keeping his own headline: “AP 2004 FLASHBACK: ‘Kenyan-Born Obama All Set for US Senate.'”
That’s not “burying the lede,” that’s shooting the lede in the eye and dumping it in the ocean.
Taken individually, it’s tough to pin these things down, but collectively, this recent Kenya garbage, along with the race-baiting Rev. Wright strategy that Mitt Romney insists he repudiates while he keeps talking about it, the feverish attempts to make him a puppet of the New Black Panthers, plus the long history of mainstream Republicans effectively calling the President a Mau Mau (Classic Kenya Garbage™), and their longtime embrace of the Birther movement itself, all make pretty clear what the objective here is. Everybody knows we elected a black president; are you sure you want to reelect one? I mean, he’s not just black, he’s Kenya-black.
Just to be clear, I’m not saying any of these people are racists, I don’t know what’s in their hearts. I would guess most of them are not, just as most tobacco executives probably aren’t smokers. But just like other poison-peddlers, they know just which buttons to push on their target audience.
We also have a mainstream media that was fine with amplifying the Jeremiah Wright story to an eardrum-shattering pitch, yet cannot bring itself to ask Mitt Romney how he could sit in a church for 31 years (until 1978) whose policy it was to exclude black men from their priesthood. It’s not a question of beliefs, but of policy, yet no reporter has asked him that question during this election. That’s because Mitt Romney enjoys that most welcome of white privileges, cultural self-forgiveness.
That’s a shame, because such questions could provide Mitt Romney with yet another opportunity to show some wisdom and leadership. There is a right answer to that question, and the media should give Romney a chance to say it. Or not.
As for the likes of Breitbart.com, Drudge, and Jim Hoft, they would do well to heed my friend Jeff, who said:
Look folks. Nobody want Obama out more than I do. But this birther crap is just that–CRAP. And I hate having to defend the usually biased AP, but fair is fair.
Why are we spending time on this nonsense when there is so much low-hanging fruit to go after…like his record as president.
All this story does is make Obama’s opposition look foolish, take time away from focusing on his lousy record and help him win re-election.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
