2010: The Birther Year in Review

Once again, our friends at Oh For Goodness Sake have put together a great encapsulation of a years' worth of Birther silliness.

The only thing it seems to be missing is the rather humorous episode where Joseph Farah of World Net Daily got his undies in a bunch because Newsweek dared to call him a proponent of Birtherism. He demanded a retraction, and got a clearly unapologetic one:

Continuing to call for public officials to release personal documents even after they have been released—and continuing to dispute their authenticity even after they have been independently verified—is the very definition of fostering conspiracy theories. Nonetheless, a clarification is in order: Farah is correct when he claims that he has never explicitly stated that Obama was not born in the United States.

And that seems to have been the end of that matter... except that Farah the non-Birther then spent most of the rest of that year at bat for a birther named Terry Lakin -- then LTC Terry Lakin -- and cheer-leadered his unfortunate behind all the way into a court martial, and, unsurprisingly, the stockade.

An incident in which no one has been left laughing. No one with a soul, at any rate.

The episode taught us two things. 1: Joseph Farah is a shameless hack, and 2:, if you mention him in something there's a good chance your article will show up on World Net Daily's search engine. He seems to have caught Richard Poe's disease. But I digress.

When I blogged about 2009's Birther nonsense, last year, I mostly talked about Orly Taitz, but 2010 saw the rise of other "stars," like the unfortunate Terry Lakin. I see I was right that the issue would continue -- I just didn't expect it to cause damage to someone like that.

Another reason to keep an eye on this silliness -- it has now created at least one second-hand casualty. It will probably cause more in the next year, too, though I doubt it'll come from the armed forces, this time. Hopefully they all learned their lesson watching this fellow flail around under alien orders.

But you never know what the new year will hold... will you? I'd make predictions, but Doc Conspiracy beat me to it. Enjoy.