Frankly, the whole Birther thing reminds of how, back in the day, debates about whether a prince was actually the king’s son served as proxies for debates about whether the prince would make a good king.
You are being unreasonably generous to Birthers. If they wanted to discuss Obama’s qualifications and abilities then they would be discussing them explicitly. A crown prince has the lawful right to take the throne when the reigning monarch died—one of the few ways to get rid of a bad prince was to have him declared illegitimate. If Obama is a bad president then he can be voted out, no need to invent spurious reasons for his disqualification. Birthers are manufacturing doubt about Obama’s birthplace and then demanding balanced coverage of both sides of the story. That’s also what you’re doing in the last paragraph of your post: “I don’t know the truth, but I find it interesting that...” You have all the evidence you need to come to an informed opinion. Balanced coverage would be reporting the fact that he was born in Hawaii and has the birth certificate to prove it.
This strikes me as an excuse to avoid looking at the evidence being presented.
No, the evidence is the birth certificate. I’ve looked at it. Saying “I don’t know, but I find it interesting...” is offering innuendo in the place of evidence, since you seem to believe the birth certificate is real, which means the “born in Kenya” claim has to be incorrect.
You are being unreasonably generous to Birthers. If they wanted to discuss Obama’s qualifications and abilities then they would be discussing them explicitly. A crown prince has the lawful right to take the throne when the reigning monarch died—one of the few ways to get rid of a bad prince was to have him declared illegitimate. If Obama is a bad president then he can be voted out, no need to invent spurious reasons for his disqualification. Birthers are manufacturing doubt about Obama’s birthplace and then demanding balanced coverage of both sides of the story. That’s also what you’re doing in the last paragraph of your post: “I don’t know the truth, but I find it interesting that...” You have all the evidence you need to come to an informed opinion. Balanced coverage would be reporting the fact that he was born in Hawaii and has the birth certificate to prove it.
This strikes me as an excuse to avoid looking at the evidence being presented.
Birthers were claiming that the certificate was fake. That was at about the point I stopped paying attention.
No, the evidence is the birth certificate. I’ve looked at it. Saying “I don’t know, but I find it interesting...” is offering innuendo in the place of evidence, since you seem to believe the birth certificate is real, which means the “born in Kenya” claim has to be incorrect.