Michael, Bernie, and Barry

We lost two rock stars in June. They were stellar forces who had dominated their spheres of influence for decades, two beloved men whose names would brighten a room even if the stars themselves were parsecs away. I’m talking, of course, about Michael Jackson and Bernie Madoff. Both had sparks of genius; both were brought down by the people closest to them. Michael apparently died at the hands of his physician; Bernie was turned in by his sons.

People will howl at this comparison but it stands. Both men dominated their industries; both committed unspeakable acts against the innocent. Both fooled massive numbers of people and both committed crimes that were enabled by guardians – parents and financial advisers who refused to use common sense. Their crimes were obvious but their admirers were blinded by starshine. In Michaels’s case, many still are.

How can this be? Why is Jackson still admired while Madoff is viewed with universal contempt? The answer is clear: people believe what they want to believe.

Bernie’s fans were seduced by his reliable returns on investments. When it was shown that his numbers had to be false, that he was obviously a scam artist, investors and government officials all looked away. Michael’s admirers were also seduced - by his brilliant performances. His music gave them pleasure, pleasure is good, so he had to be good. When stories surfaced about his attraction to young boys, when $20 million payoffs became common knowledge, when he was investigated by public officials and private detectives and reporters from across the world and not one was able to defend him, fans ignored the obvious and embraced transparent cover stories put out by flacks. Bernie and Michael lived in a world full of adoring fans who refused to accept the truth.

The parallels ended when the truth came out. Jackson denied the obvious and that was good enough. When he went on TV and vigorously defended his right to sleep in a bed with other people’s children, his admirers applauded him. Or they didn’t care, as long as he kept entertaining them. By contrast, Madoff never had a chance. When the charges against him became public, people believed them immediately. With no proof. Everyone in the country instantly hated him including the 99% of the population that had never heard of him. Why the difference?

Because in our society, a child’s loss of innocence ranks below an adult’s loss of money.

The contrast between the two men is startling: Madoff’s guilt was never questioned but the myth of Jackson’s innocence will last longer than Bernie’s jail sentence. And these True Believers are not alone.

Remember the Elvis sightings? The stores claiming that the Moon Landings were faked? The conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11 - that the CIA was behind it, or the Mossad, or that The Evil George W. Bush could have stopped it but didn’t for his own nefarious purposes? Remember TWA flight 800 that exploded over Long Island Sound, and the conspiracy theorists who believed a Navy surface-to-air missile had shot it down? And don’t forget my favorite: the email that claimed Bill Gates would pay you $243 for every person to whom you forwarded the email.

Every single one of these stories is absurd, yet each has a band of devoted followers. Why? Because misinformed, alienated people gain comfort if they can join A VERY SPECIAL GROUP THAT KNOWS THE TRUTH about some popular subject, preferably a subject that has fooled the masses. Their myths are the very essence of self-delusion.

And the essence of self-delusion leads us to the Birthers. Like Jackson Supporters and Moon Landing Deniers, the Birthers are a misinformed, alienated group who believe They Know The Truth About A Subject That Has Fooled The Masses.

If you haven’t heard of them, Birthers believe that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and is not legally the President of the United States. I am not making this up. They believe that Obama’s claim to have been born in Hawaii is a lie; that no one has seen his Hawaiian birth certificate because he doesn’t have one, and that he was born in Kenya. They also claim that his mother was underage when he was born and that therefore Title 8 Section 1401 of the Constitution does not apply to his birth. Obama is not a US citizen, and so not legally the President of the United States.

After floundering unnoticed for months, they recently put forward a document showing that he was born in Kenya. Not surprisingly, they didn’t work hard to check it. First, it claims to have been issued in Kenya, but Kenya was founded in 1963, two years after Obama was born. Second, the Kenyan “birth certificate” was forged by cutting and pasting false information onto an old Australian birth document. (Click here to see an interview with the poor Aussie whose real birth certificate was used. And third… Oh, why bother?

The Birthers refuse to look further for truth than Fox News. If they did, they would see that the genuine Obama birth certificate, issued in Hawaii, is all over the Internet (click here and here. The Governor of Hawaii (a Republican) says he has seen the original document proving that Obama was born in Hawaii. There is no evidence that Obama’s mother was in Kenya when he was born. The Constitution does apply to her (click here) Finally, to make the entire conspiracy theory just plain funny, Birthers are now busy trying to explain why Mr. and Mrs. Obama put a birth announcement in a local Hawaiian newspaper in August, 1961, soon after the birth. That couple really knew how to plan a conspiracy! Forty years in advance, just in case!

Refuting the Birther claims is easy. The above links above took me about three minutes to find, and I found them while watching a rerun of the World Series of Poker. I’m not kidding. The problem is that the Birthers refuse to look past Fox and the unintentionally hilarious Right Wing web sites full of misinformation and disinformation. If the truth doesn’t interest you, you won’t know it when you see it.

There is no reason to defend Obama from the extreme Right Wing; this is as futile as trying to defend Bush from the extreme Left Wing. Consider this: Obama has been in office for six months and the country is clearly doing better than it was seven months ago. And yet according to the current Right-Wing myths, he is a Secret Muslim, Radical Black Christian, Terrorist Sympathizing, White-Hating, Illegal Alien Nazi-Sympathizing Socialist Who Wants to Raise Our Taxes. Rod Serling could not have made this up.

And this is the Twilight Zone slander that drives a small, angry portion of the Right: the black bastard wants to take our money! In their eyes, Obama is the Black Bernie Madoff. He is a con artist who wants to raise their taxes – to steal from the rich and give to his friends. His friends on welfare. They look at our brilliant young president and see a slick Chicago pimp who has fooled a lot of Liberals. How else could he have ever become president? And did I mention that he is black?

Usually I write light-hearted, personal stories designed to make my friends laugh. But not today. Today I am embarrassed for my country. The Birthers are the same hooligans who have taken to disrupting democratically organized town hall meetings between Congressional representatives and their constituents. Screaming slogans such as “I want my country back!” they shout down the speakers, they shout down fellow citizens who disagree with them, and they physically threaten elected officials who dare to hold liberal positions. They are American Brownshirts, egged on by sociopathic rabblerousers like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. They hate Obama because he has upset the natural order of things: he is a black man in the White House running more than the kitchen. When they scream that they want their country back, they are asking for a return to a White Christian America.

The American Brownshirts believe they hate Obama because he is a Secret Muslim, Radical Black Whatever. The truth is deeper. They hate him because like Michael Jackson he has stolen their childhood innocence. Worse, they fear that, like Bernie Madoff, he will steal their money. They lived lives protected by the belief that the United States would always be run by White Christians, and then Obama shattered their future with his Black father and his Black wife and his Black friends and his non-Christian name.

And this is why they like to call him by the Anglo-Saxon diminutive “Barry”, the name his white mother and white grandmother used. They want him to be less frightening. It doesn’t work: Barry is their nightmare lurking in a dark Harlem alley.

Are you offended? Watch the footage on the nightly news. Almost every Brownshirt is an angry white person past forty. They look at the new Washington, DC and see Michelle Obama and Eric Holder and Sonya Sotomayor and Steven Chu and Valerie Jarrett and Eric Shinseki and they are frightened to their core. And then they see Hilary Clinton, a woman they have hated since Rush Limbaugh told them to hate her in 1992, and they see nightmares in dark places. Dark Harlem places.

Obama was a professor of constitutional law at Harvard. If he was a white man, the Far Right would grudgingly accept him. They would find things to complain about but they would admit that after eight years of an administration notable only for incompetence and failure, any new president deserved a chance. But not Obama. He fails the skin test. And so they are frightened and angry, and they form bullying mobs that threaten anyone who disagrees with them. Like the admirers of Michael Jackson and Bernie Madoff, the American Brownshirts are enabled by guardians – Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, Coulter, Savage, etc. – who refuse to use common sense.

Should we be frightened by any of this? Not yet. The Birther controversy is winding down; mainstream Republican politicians have begun to distance themselves from this nonsense. (They know they won't get re-elected if they lose 99% of mainstream voters with IQs over 90.) However, be wary. The Birthers/Brownshirters are out there. They are easily manipulated by the Limbaugh crowd, they have a history of angrily acting out their fantasies, and they live next door. Next door to you.