President Obama seems to have decided that the best way to deal with the question of where he was born is to joke about it:
The president appears to be loving the whole Obama-wasn't-born-here myth.
At a lunch on Capitol Hill on St. Patrick's Day, Obama told an audience that included plenty of Republicans that "some are still bent on peddling rumors about my origins." But he wasn't talking about what you'd think he was alluding to:
"Now, speaking of ancestry, there has been some controversy about my own background. Two years into my presidency, some are still bent on peddling rumors about my origins. So today, I want to put all those rumors to rest. It is true my great-great-great-grandfather really was from Ireland. It's true. Moneygall, to be precise. I can't believe I have to keep pointing this out."
Obama cracked his laugh line just a week after rattling off another birther joke he used to address the persistent claim among some conservatives that he wasn't born in Hawaii, but rather in Kenya.
I'm generally in favor of this approach, not only because people who believe the president wasn't born in the United States won't be convinced by things like "facts" and "evidence" but also because mockery is extraordinarily powerful. One of our most basic human desires is to maintain the esteem of others. Being made fun of is painful, and people will go to great lengths to avoid it. If you can make birthers less an object of concern than an object of laughing contempt, you'll go a long way toward isolating them from the rest of us.
The problem here is that Obama is mocking the idea that he wasn't born in the U.S., not the people who believe it. That would be a lot more effective. But perhaps it might seem too cruel for a president.
