{"id":2589,"date":"2010-04-21T11:56:24","date_gmt":"2010-04-21T16:56:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/?p=2589"},"modified":"2010-04-21T11:56:44","modified_gmt":"2010-04-21T16:56:44","slug":"birther","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/2010\/04\/21\/birther\/","title":{"rendered":"Birther Business"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via Johnathan Chait,\u00a0 six states are considering legislation<\/a> inspired by the claim that our current president was not born in the United States.<\/p>\n

Chait points us to Arizona’s proposed legislation in their House that stipulates:<\/p>\n

if the secretary of state has reasonable cause to believe that the candidate does not meet the citizenship, age and residency requirements prescribed by law, the secretary of state shall not place that candidate’s name on the ballot<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Why is this particular brand of public “nut-job-ism” gaining traction in state legislatures? Because according to a new New York Times\/CBS poll<\/a>, 42% of Americans either do not believe or are not sure that President Obama is a U.S. citizen…this percentage is no doubt higher in places where the public mix of ideology, education level, and attitudes towards race make this particular myth more appealing.<\/p>\n

I understand that wacky conspiracy theories are significant part of our politics.\u00a0 Remember, Clinton was a drug dealer?<\/a> Bush was a cocaine addict?<\/a> Loose change?<\/a> A 2006 Scripps\/Howard poll found that 36% of Americans thought that the federal government knew about the 9-11 attacks.<\/p>\n

Great.\u00a0 Fine.\u00a0 Have at it.\u00a0 Normally, I’d give little thought to “fringe” opinion in the U.S. polity.\u00a0 But when a “fringe” opinion coalesces into a movement and is taken seriously by mainstream media, then I think there’s room to worry.\u00a0 In a liberal, democratic society, nut-jobs should add comic-relief to public discourse, not drive legislation!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Via Johnathan Chait,\u00a0 six states are considering legislation inspired by the claim that our current president was not born in the United States. Chait points us to Arizona’s proposed legislation in their House that stipulates: if the secretary of state has reasonable cause to believe that the candidate does not meet the citizenship, age and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/129"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2589"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2591,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2589\/revisions\/2591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/thickculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}