FREAK(S) OF THE WEEK: The anti-Obama Birthers

This past week was so chock full o’ freaks that it was all I could do to keep up with all the freakiness. But by far, the biggest freaks were the so-called Birthers. These are the people on the far right fringe of the Republican Party who believe – despite all evidence to the contrary – that Barack Obama is not an American citizen.

This anti-Obama talk started during last year’s campaign, promoted by the same conservatives who cheered Sarah Palin when she said Obama was “paling around with terrorists.”

Despite making public the documents showing that Obama was indeed born in Hawaii – which, if you recall, is a state – the Birthers roared back with a vengeance at the same time Obama is promoting those “socialist” health care reforms. (Can you say “diversionary tactic”? I knew that you could.)

The rebirth of the Birthers occurred during a recent town hall meeting held by moderate Republican Congressman Mike Castle of Delaware. An angry citizen – reminiscent of the elderly woman who insisted to John McCain that Obama is an Arab – stood up waving around an American flag and her own birth certificate, demanding to see Obama’s.

“He is not an American citizen. He is a citizen of Kenya,” she shrieked, adding that her father fought in World War II (because, you know, that’s relevant). “I don’t want this flag to change. I want my country back,” she added while the audience cheered and whistled in approval. When Castle said that Obama is indeed an American citizen, he was booed. (See for yourself at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwgzYkTDsmQ.)

The movement gained more traction last week when California Congressman John Campbell went on MSNBC’s “Hardball” to promote his bill requiring presidential candidates to show copies of their birth certificates.

This interview didn’t go well for Campbell, with host Chris Matthews pressing him on whether or not he thought Obama was an American citizen. Campbell finally said, “As far as I know, yes.”

Still, the bill feeds the Birthers, whose ranks go as high as CNN’s Lou Dobbs and whose cause has been taken up by Dick Cheney daughter Liz.

What makes absolutely no sense is that the Birthers keep demanding to see Obama’s birth certificate when it’s already out there as part of the public record. So, the conversation goes something like this:

Crazy Birther: I want to see Obama’s birth certificate!

Sane person: OK, here it is.

Crazy Birther: But I want to see Obama’s birth certificate!

Sane person: I just showed it to you.

Crazy Birther: Yeah, but I want to see Obama’s birth certificate!

And on and on.

Funny how these crazy right-wingers never made an issue of any other politician’s status as an American citizen. So what’s going on?

Here it is, and it’s disgusting. There are Americans who just can’t accept, won’t accept, that a black man is president of the United States. Worse than that, he’s a black man with the “un-American” name Barack Hussein Obama. He was born in Hawaii (barely a state, although all of a sudden Alaska is the most American of states), and he lived part of his childhood in Indonesia. Given all that, Obama is seen by some as less than a real, red-blooded American.

During the campaign, Palin talked about how some places in the United States were more American than others. This Birthers movement is part of the fallout from that kind of divisive rhetoric.

It’s racist, it’s ugly, and it’s an evil eating away at the heart of the nation.

FREAK OF THE WEEK: Washington, D.C., on-air host Doug McKelway

This week, the FredBlog shines its freaklight on Doug McKelway, a TV anchor in Washington, D.C., who makes us wonder if thou doth protest too much.

I know, you’ve never heard of this McKelway guy. I hadn’t either until I learned about his interview on NewsChannel 8’s “Let’s Talk Live” with fellow blogger Mike Rogers. The interview caught my attention at first just because Rogers is talking about the documentary he appears in, “Outrage,” about gay-but-closeted U.S. politicians. (The film is well worth seeing, by the way.)

Although McKelway is on Washington’s ABC affiliate, he was obviously influenced by the Fox News Channel school of interview techniques. He rants at Rogers from the get-go that he is opposed to Rogers’ work exposing closeted-yet-anti-gay politicians. And it escalates from there, with McKelway seemingly taking the whole issue very personally. McKelway even threatens to take Rogers outside and punch him in the face.

This is well worth watching:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4YhlmxUs_s

But that was only the beginning. The next day, when co-host Natasha Barrett (very weakly) tries to take McKelway to task, he very pointedly says he will not apologize. Here’s that video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulZFOz0N6Fg&feature=PlayList&p=E0E8641BDFD49DAC&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=68

First off, there is an issue here that McKelway clearly does not get, which is that reporting on someone’s sexual orientation is NOT the same thing as gossiping about someone’s sexual behavior. It’s pathetic if McKelway holds to the outdated stereotype that sexual orientation is the same thing as sexual behavior.

And I’ve said it before, but I guess it needs to be said again. Sexual orientation, if relevant to a story, is not a matter of invading privacy – it’s a matter of reporting truth, which is what journalism is supposed to be about. In an age when politicians’ and celebrities’ divorces, remarriages, affairs and sex tapes are fair game, why is it unfair to ask Florida Gov. Charlie Crist if he is gay?

Secondly, regardless of your personal bias, no respectable journalist has a right to be so disrespectful to an interview subject – and you certainly shouldn’t be threatening a guest with physical violence. McKelway should be suspended or fired – not allowed to use his show to make a point that he won’t apologize.

But lastly, Mr. McKelway, why is it exactly that this issue hits such a nerve? Just asking.

MORE CHENEY FREAKINESS

Since when can’t former Vice President Dick Cheney carry his own water? Well, this week, it seems, since the Republican Party has trotted out his daughter, Liz Cheney, as a “Republican strategist” to defend her father’s apocalyptic blubbering.

Since when is Liz Cheney a “Republican strategist”? All of a sudden, she is showing up on news chat shows, perhaps because the GOP is finally realizing that Dick “Darth Vader” Cheney is a terrible messenger for whatever ridiculous argument the party is now making.

ABC News’ “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” even put Liz Cheney on its round table to be part of the discussion of Dick Cheney’s dire predictions about national security under the Obama administration. Yeah, because, there was really a possibility that Liz Cheney would break out of the Cheneyland spin.

And while the party is forcing one Cheney daughter upon us, where’s the other one? That would be Mary Cheney, the public-when-she-wants-to-be lesbian daughter of Dick who famously worked for her father’s team but would not challenge her father on gay issues.

Then again, Mary Cheney has proven that she has a revolving door on her closet, and while the party has no problem with Liz Cheney, Mary is hiding in the shadows once again.