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SALT LAKE CITY -- Love him or hate him, most people agree President Barack Obama is a pretty smart guy. So how could he possibly think that producing a birth certificate from Hawaii is actually going to end the controversy over whether he has a birth certificate from Hawaii?
People of much less intellectual capacity have already figured out that no amount of "fact" is going to dislodge the righteous "birthers" from their certainty that the president is anything other than a covert agent of a vast worldwide conspiracy. Conspiracy, you ask, to do exactly what? Well, fill in the blank:
The conspiracy seeks to overturn the U.S. Constitution in order to:
a) usher in a socialist agenda
b) enslave Americans under a new form of communism
c) form a Muslim caliphate with worldwide dominion
d) make it easier for more Kenyans to win more American marathons.
The President should realize that presidential conspiracy theories are a favorite American pastime. (Or perhaps he is fully aware of that and is playing along in order to help us through the doldrums caused by the coast-to-coast delay of meteorological spring).
Poll:
The "birthers" are just the latest incarnation of a uniquely American form of paranoid gullibility that rises with regularity in nearly every administration. President Bush, you know, orchestrated the Sept. 11 attacks in order to soften up America as part of a conspiracy too (see above). President Clinton plotted to have a top aide (Vince Foster) murdered to cover up a range of conspiratorial plans. Shoot, even the second president - John Adams - was accused of conspiring to bring back the British monarchy. The fact that his son was tapped to succeed him as President was seen at the time as pretty good evidence of that little gambit.
There were relatively few conspiracy theories floating around during the Nixon administration, so the president himself stepped up and organized an actual conspiracy.
Come to think of it, isn't it interesting that the Watergate burglary took place just a couple of months before the summer Olympics in Munich?
A big story in those Olympics was the shocking upset of the heavily-favored American men's track team in the 1600-meter relay race.
Who beat them? The Kenyans.
Email: cpsarras@ksl.com
