Ryan Chittum of The Columbia Journalism Review does a great take down of the barely-coded racist and nativist piece, including the fact that the nativist author of the piece is a foreign-born immigrant who only visited America for the first time when he was 17 - but that let that stop him from accusing Obama of spending time outside of America before he was - what age? - 17!
But hey, he's a Republican, and they don't let facts get in the way of some good hate.
It’s all here but the birth certificate!Of course, don't forget Romney's ongoing pitch to the nativist crowd and to racists as well - leading up to Romney's embrace of birtherism this past Friday (which is both racist and nativist).
Let’s unpack that stuff a little bit. First of all, D’Souza perpetuates the Cokie Roberts idiocy—that Hawaii is somehow less American than the rest of the U.S. But hey—no problems with Alaska, which came into the Union the same year. Somehow, Sarah Palin always seem to be an examplar of “Real America.” Hmmm.
But D’Souza has some real nerve here: Obama is a native-born American and D’Souza is not. When he says “Here is a man who spent his formative years—the first 17 years of his life—off the American mainland,” he could be referring to himself. According to Wikipedia, anyway, he was born in India in 1961 and never came to the States until 1978. That adds up to about “the first 17 years of his life—off the American mainland.” Somehow the first-seventeen years thing raises questions about Obama’s Americanness but not about D’Souza’s qualifications to question somebody’s degree of native-born Americanness.
This is loathsome stuff. And, again, it’s the cover story of one of the three big mainstream financial magazines.
