A Quick Response to #TCOT
The #TCOT Report homepage is currently given over to a huge picture of me and this charge, which I’ll just reprint below:
“„Meme Wars: “Transparency Dodger” David Weigel of Washington Independent Falsely Labels #TCOT Co-founder With “Birther” Meme
“„Weigel is same “journalist” who played a role in launching the false “teabagger” meme
It’s a response to this post, pointing out how Michael Patrick Leahy had used #TCOT — the hub of a grassroots group whose hashtag appears in tweets by Republicans such as Karl Rove — as a way to push the conspiracy theories about Barack Obama’s birthplace as a “transparency” issue.
I’ll address this quickly. Barack Obama is going to be a historical figure whether or not he’s a successful president. Biographers will want to see every shred of information about him. So I’m all in favor of seeing Obama’s college records, passport records, et al., someday.
What Leahy was doing was somewhat less than that. He, like the people who’ve been dogging this issue for months, refused to accept an unambiguous statement about Obama’s birthplace from Hawaiian officials. He wanted Hawaii to go into records and name “the attending physician at President Obama’s birth.” Sure, that’s asking for transparency, but it’s also echoing the argument of conspiracy theorists and casting aspersions on a state official who, understandably, chooses not to spend every day of her life answering demands from “birthers.”
