Anatomy Of A Lunatic Story

Plenty of much-deserved pushback on the Birther nonsense over the weekend, and it's about time.
First, TPM's Josh Marshall looks at the entire lack of logic over the controversy to begin with.

This appears to be the lacunae the birthers hang their hat on (from the State Department website ...)

Birth Abroad to One Citizen and One Alien Parent in Wedlock: A child born abroad to one U.S. citizen parent and one alien parent acquires U.S. citizenship at birth under Section 301(g) INA provided the citizen parent was physically present in the U.S. for the time period required by the law applicable at the time of the child's birth. (For birth on or after November 14, 1986, a period of five years physical presence, two after the age of fourteen is required. For birth between December 24, 1952 and November 13, 1986, a period of ten years, five after the age of fourteen are required for physical presence in the U.S. to transmit U.S. citizenship to the child.

Their thinking seems to be that since Obama's mother was just shy of her 19th birthday at the time of his birth, she couldn't meet the "five after the age of fourteen" requirement, thus necessitating rushing home to get the phony certification of stateside birth to make the eventual run for president possible.

That's it. That's the entire argument, which of course is pointless because he was born in Hawaii.

So why are the Birthers so vehemently against Barack Obama being in the White House? Via Political Animal, and Media Matters, CNN's Howard Kurtz explains.

Emphasis mine:

To his credit, Kurtz tackled the nutty story today, and did so in such a way as to criticize the media's handling of the baseless "controversy." In fact, Kurtz called the claims "ludicrous" and noted "there is no factual basis for them."

Roger Simon added that the media is looking for excuses "not to act responsibly" and not to "use any judgment." Both Simon and Kurtz agreed that this is "tantamount to giving airtime to flat-earth people," but Simon was right to add, "[T]here's a racial element to this story, too. Some people, quite frankly, cannot accept the fact we have a black president ... and some of them are seeking to delegitimize his presidency." These nuts, Simon said, are getting "much too much" assistance from major news outlets.

Lauren Ashburn of USA Today added, "[I]t's unethical of the media to be taking this issue and putting it front and center when all of the proof is there to the contrary."

Roger Simon deserves a freakin' medal for finally saying on national TV what should have been said from the outset of this stupidity back during the 2008 campaign. My hat is doffed, sir. Simon's statement is absolutely true. At the core of this entire controversy is a raging, illogical hatred of Barack Obama. It is racial, it is cultural, and what makes it dangerous is that the people behind this hatred have taken it upon themselves to correct what they see as a massive oversight, to "rescue America from having a black President", to overturn the democratic will of the people because of personal prejudice and animosity towards him.

They in fact will never stop. The more legitimacy given to this idiocy, the more it will boil over until it stops being a lunitic fringe theory on the internet into something much worse. The only response to this is what Simon and Kurtz and his guests have done: smash it right in the mouth and expose it for the racially-motivated hatred it is.

About damn time, too.

[UPDATE 9:39 AM] As Steven D notes, so much of the irrational hatred of Obama has two components: 1) it's mostly racial in nature, 2) Wingers bend over backwards to invent justifications for the hatred as being anything other than racial.