Damn! They’ve sussed it out.
I see from Orcinus that O’Reilly and Goldberg found themselves a couple of brain cells, rubbed ’em together, and dimly glimpsed what debblish mischief we’ve been up to all this time with the ridiculing of the flat birthers:
Goldberg
I have a theory. And the theory is this: That the Chicago Mafia inside the White House want to keep this crazy controversy going. Because the longer it goes, the better the chance that they will conflate the crazy right-wing fringe with regular conservatives and regular Republicans.
O’Reilly
That’s not a bad theory.
Oh, but boys. It’s so much larger than that. See, as Frank Rich demonstrates (for those who will read), it’s not just the “regular” conservatives and “regular” Republicans we want to tie to this madness:
The birth-certificate canard is just the latest version of those campaign-year attempts to strip Obama of his American identity with faux controversies over flag pins, the Pledge of Allegiance and his middle name. Last summer, Cokie Roberts of ABC News even faulted him for taking a vacation in his home state of Hawaii, which she described as a “foreign, exotic place,” in contrast to her proposed choice of Myrtle Beach, SC, in the real America of Dixie.
Or wait—is Cokie actually a “regular” conservative? It’s so easy to lose sight of them, these days.
