They Just Won't Leave Sarah Palin Alone
Posted: Fri Dec 05, 2008 7:22 am
Truthers to the Left of Me, Truthers to the Right
by Michelle Malkin
Did you know that Sarah Palin-haters are still trying to prove she didn't
give birth to her youngest son, Trig? These tinfoil hat-wearers are as
obnoxious and unhinged as the 9/11 Truth cultists who insist that America
engineered the jihadi attacks on itself.
The presidential campaign may be over, but there's no expiration date on
Palin Derangement Syndrome.
Jack Bogdanski, a law professor at Lewis and Clark College in Portland,
Oregon, stirred up Trig Trutherism again this week with a post on his
website exposing "Sarah Palin's fake pregnancy belly."
Armed with frontal photos of Palin's stomach, Bogdanski declared: "The
Mar. 26 photo is the smoking gun. There really is no chance that there's
a baby in there who will be born 23 days later at six pounds birth weight.
And there really is no chance that the child grew so suddenly over the
following two weeks. ? Sarah Palin is not the mother."
We're all obstetricians now!
This nonsense began with left-wing Internet rumors that Palin was really
Trig's grandmother and that she was covering up for the "real" mother --
her teenage daughter, Bristol. The conspiracy was hyped by The
Atlantic's excitable resident womb-chaser Andrew Sullivan and later
amplified by "respectable" journalists like CNN/Washington Post media
reporter Howard Kurtz.
As the fever swamps roiled, Alaska TV reporter Cherie Shirey stepped
forward to squash the paranoia with a statement to the liberal
Huffington Post:
"These Internet rumors are very bizarre. We worked with Gov. Palin
many times in 2008. Our reporters worked her on location and in the
studio, and I worked with her myself. She was definitely pregnant. You
could see it in her belly and her face. The whole idea that Sarah Palin
wasn't pregnant with Trig is completely, absolutely absurd."
Shirey was ignored. Profile shots of a heavily pregnant Palin taken in April
2008 didn't satisfy the Fake Belly mob, either. The disclosure that Bristol
was in fact pregnant with her teenage boyfriend's child did not quell the
insanity.
Neither did a health assessment from Palin's personal physician affirming
her five pregnancies, nor did contemporaneous hospital accounts of the
birth or Palin's accounts of nursing Trig.
It's only a matter of time before someone accuses Palin of planting fake
breast milk on her pump.
The plain truth will never mollify a Truther. There's always a convoluted
excuse -- some inconsequential discrepancy to seize on, some
photographic "evidence" to magnify into a blur of meaningless pixels --
that will rationalize irrationality.
Palin could produce Trig's umbilical cord - and it still wouldn't be enough.
Alas, Trutherism thrives on both the left and right.
Which brings us to the spate of lawsuits challenging President-elect
Barack Obama's U.S. citizenship. On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court
considers one of those suits, filed by New Jersey citizen Leo Donofrio,
who maintains that Obama is not a "natural born citizen" because his
father held British citizenship.
There may be the seed of a legitimate constitutional issue to explore
here -- how is the citizenship requirement enforced for presidential
candidates, anyway? And at least Donofrio concedes that Obama was
born in Hawaii. But a dangerously large segment of the birth-certificate
hunters have lurched into rabid Truther territory.
The most prominent crusader against Obama's American citizenship
claim, lawyer Philip Berg (who, not coincidentally, is also a prominent
9/11 Truther) disputes that Obama was born in Hawaii and claims that
Obama's paternal grandmother told him she saw Obama born in Kenya.
Berg and his supporters further assert that the "Certification of Live Birth"
produced by Obama was altered or forged. They claim that the
contemporaneous announcement in a Hawaii newspaper of Obama's birth
is insufficient evidence that he was born there. (Did a fortuneteller place
it in the paper knowing he would run for president?) And they accuse
anyone who disagrees with them of being part and parcel of the grand
plan to install Emperor Obama and usurp the rule of law.
I believe Trig was born to Sarah Palin.
I believe Barack Obama was born in Hawaii.
I believe fire can melt steel...
And that bin Laden's jihadi crew -- not Bush and Cheney -- perpetrated
mass murder on 9/11.
What kind of kooky conspiracist does that make me?
POLL:
What do you think of Obama's cabinet picks?
A. I'm pleasantly surprised Bill Ayers wasn't nominated
B. The team of egos will destroy itself
C. They are a scary group of liberals
Results:
I'm pleasantly surprised Bill Ayers wasn't nominated (26 %)
The team of egos will destroy itself (30 %)
They are a scary group of liberals (44 %)
Student Attacked over Sarah Palin Pin
CNN's Jack Cafferty Piles on Palin
by Michelle Malkin
Did you know that Sarah Palin-haters are still trying to prove she didn't
give birth to her youngest son, Trig? These tinfoil hat-wearers are as
obnoxious and unhinged as the 9/11 Truth cultists who insist that America
engineered the jihadi attacks on itself.
The presidential campaign may be over, but there's no expiration date on
Palin Derangement Syndrome.
Jack Bogdanski, a law professor at Lewis and Clark College in Portland,
Oregon, stirred up Trig Trutherism again this week with a post on his
website exposing "Sarah Palin's fake pregnancy belly."
Armed with frontal photos of Palin's stomach, Bogdanski declared: "The
Mar. 26 photo is the smoking gun. There really is no chance that there's
a baby in there who will be born 23 days later at six pounds birth weight.
And there really is no chance that the child grew so suddenly over the
following two weeks. ? Sarah Palin is not the mother."
We're all obstetricians now!
This nonsense began with left-wing Internet rumors that Palin was really
Trig's grandmother and that she was covering up for the "real" mother --
her teenage daughter, Bristol. The conspiracy was hyped by The
Atlantic's excitable resident womb-chaser Andrew Sullivan and later
amplified by "respectable" journalists like CNN/Washington Post media
reporter Howard Kurtz.
As the fever swamps roiled, Alaska TV reporter Cherie Shirey stepped
forward to squash the paranoia with a statement to the liberal
Huffington Post:
"These Internet rumors are very bizarre. We worked with Gov. Palin
many times in 2008. Our reporters worked her on location and in the
studio, and I worked with her myself. She was definitely pregnant. You
could see it in her belly and her face. The whole idea that Sarah Palin
wasn't pregnant with Trig is completely, absolutely absurd."
Shirey was ignored. Profile shots of a heavily pregnant Palin taken in April
2008 didn't satisfy the Fake Belly mob, either. The disclosure that Bristol
was in fact pregnant with her teenage boyfriend's child did not quell the
insanity.
Neither did a health assessment from Palin's personal physician affirming
her five pregnancies, nor did contemporaneous hospital accounts of the
birth or Palin's accounts of nursing Trig.
It's only a matter of time before someone accuses Palin of planting fake
breast milk on her pump.
The plain truth will never mollify a Truther. There's always a convoluted
excuse -- some inconsequential discrepancy to seize on, some
photographic "evidence" to magnify into a blur of meaningless pixels --
that will rationalize irrationality.
Palin could produce Trig's umbilical cord - and it still wouldn't be enough.
Alas, Trutherism thrives on both the left and right.
Which brings us to the spate of lawsuits challenging President-elect
Barack Obama's U.S. citizenship. On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court
considers one of those suits, filed by New Jersey citizen Leo Donofrio,
who maintains that Obama is not a "natural born citizen" because his
father held British citizenship.
There may be the seed of a legitimate constitutional issue to explore
here -- how is the citizenship requirement enforced for presidential
candidates, anyway? And at least Donofrio concedes that Obama was
born in Hawaii. But a dangerously large segment of the birth-certificate
hunters have lurched into rabid Truther territory.
The most prominent crusader against Obama's American citizenship
claim, lawyer Philip Berg (who, not coincidentally, is also a prominent
9/11 Truther) disputes that Obama was born in Hawaii and claims that
Obama's paternal grandmother told him she saw Obama born in Kenya.
Berg and his supporters further assert that the "Certification of Live Birth"
produced by Obama was altered or forged. They claim that the
contemporaneous announcement in a Hawaii newspaper of Obama's birth
is insufficient evidence that he was born there. (Did a fortuneteller place
it in the paper knowing he would run for president?) And they accuse
anyone who disagrees with them of being part and parcel of the grand
plan to install Emperor Obama and usurp the rule of law.
I believe Trig was born to Sarah Palin.
I believe Barack Obama was born in Hawaii.
I believe fire can melt steel...
And that bin Laden's jihadi crew -- not Bush and Cheney -- perpetrated
mass murder on 9/11.
What kind of kooky conspiracist does that make me?
POLL:
What do you think of Obama's cabinet picks?
A. I'm pleasantly surprised Bill Ayers wasn't nominated
B. The team of egos will destroy itself
C. They are a scary group of liberals
Results:
I'm pleasantly surprised Bill Ayers wasn't nominated (26 %)
The team of egos will destroy itself (30 %)
They are a scary group of liberals (44 %)
Student Attacked over Sarah Palin Pin
CNN's Jack Cafferty Piles on Palin