In case you've been too busy painting your tribute Will & Kate figurines to notice, this morning the White House released the famous "long form" version of Barack Obama's birth certificate. Briefly: When you ask Hawaii for your birth certificate, they generate and send to you a legally valid, official document with a seal and everything, but the original remains on file. Birthers have claimed that the version available since the 2008 Obama campaign put it on their website is a forgery, and Obama is hiding the long-form one, because either it doesn't exist or it shows he was born in Kenya or perhaps on Klendathu.
Apparently, the president got so fed up that he sent his counsel to Hawaii to retrieve the original. And here it is.
This, of course, will not quiet the true birther. Because any true conspiracy theorist has their beliefs strengthened, not undermined, by evidence that the conspiracy doesn't exist. After all, just look at how diabolical this conspiracy is, that they would go to these lengths to forge this document and keep it hidden. The conspiracy reaches even farther than we imagined!
So the birthers aren't going anywhere. What this will do, I think, is make it increasingly untenable for elite Republicans to keep giving their little winks and nods to the birthers, letting them know that they're with them in spirit. The standard way to do this is to say, "I take the president at his word that he was born in the United States," as though Obama's word is really all we have to go on, and you'll give him the benefit of the doubt. In other words, while nothing can convince the true birthers, being birther-curious (see Adam's definitive birther lexicon) is something that will now make you seem like even more of a nut. Everyone will remember the round of press coverage this release receives, and the next time someone like a presidential candidate tries to get away with "I take him at his word," he'll be mocked and derided. Or so we can hope.
