Natural-Born Character Assassins Welcome!

I started a blog because I like to write. I'll occasionally reprint something, with full attribution, in order to provide context to a comment. Still, I believe that the best blogs sprout from the mind, and keyboard, of the blogger. You don't get a lot of quantity at Prevailing Winds, but the quality, or lack thereof, is all mine.

Now, this isn't the approach of Moscow's uber-blogger, Dale Courtney, who produces in his Right-Mind blog an astonishing number of posts daily, almost none of which include anything written by the blogmeister himself. Right-Mind was named last year as Idaho's most influential political blog, which is quite an honor. But the honor is Dale's as an archivist, or a news clippings clerk, and not as a writer or analyst. While I congratulate him on being #1, I would prefer that whatever kudos I get are in response to something I've actually written. That's the journalist in me; it doesn't die out easily, even with cutting and pasting and hyperlinks.

If, however, I were to have a blog whose contents rely on reprints of cartoons, articles, publications, statistics, and whatever else, I would still be discerning in what I include, because my blog would reflect not only my opinions, but my character as well. I wouldn't crib stories from the paranoid Right, the loony Left, the gutter-skimming tabloids or the pompous posers of pseudo journalism. With a blog, you don't have to include what you don't want to, and there are elements in the print media and on the Internet that I'd slam the door shut on. The one who hosts a banquet of weirdness, paranoia, obsessive and dishonesty ends up, well, looking weird, paranoid, obsessive and dishonest himself.

So why post yet another breathless report from World Net Daily.com, informing us that once again, the courts will take another look at an issue burning only for the exceedingly odd among us? Yes, it's this: Whether or not, and please stop me if you've heard this before, President-elect Barack Obama is a natural-born citizen of the United States.

This one's had a long life -- longer, even, than the Religious Right's shameful, sinful speculation that Obama is the Antichrist. But the issue that enflames Obama's enemies survives only because malice and bigotry can be relentless. I'm quite sure that a white guy named Patrick O'Shaughnessy, if born in Oahu and not Omaha, would still never be nagged by people screaming that being born in one of the 50 States, while it was a state, nonetheless makes his citizenship suspect. I'm entirely certain that, brilliant as Barack Obama is, he was not capable, in utero, of devising a plan to print public records, publicly distributed, announcing his birth two days after he emerged from the uterus of his American mom. And I'm absolutely sure that faux-journalists who pronounce dire warnings and drop deep, dark innuendo about something that isn't true deserve the contempt with which they and their organizations are treated by those who tend not to foam at the mouth when discussing politics, even before they embraced the writings of the Rabid Badger of Right-wing Bigotry, Ann Coulter.

But Dale invites WND and its conspiracy whispers and character assassinations to litter his blog a few times a week. WND's analysis of questions into Obama's status as a natural-born citizen includes reminders that "for whatever reason," he hasn't produced his actual, paper birth certificate. (Here's my non-paranoid, entirely rational guess at the reason: Individuals do not have their original, paper birth certificates in their possession). I can't imagine what WND's and Dale's guesses would be, but I pray they don't involve trench coats, numchucks, Jimmy Hoffa, space aliens or Vito Corleone.

The article concludes with the solemn reminder that IF this man takes office as an imposter, interloper, or imp of Satan, it will have happened "on our watch." "On our watch"? Goodness. I think I'll decline to take responsibility for the Obama presidency happening on my watch, but I'm left wondering why in the world an elder at a Christian church would allow such malicious drivel to proliferate on his.