The Birthers' Star Spangled Banner

July 26, 2009

Through the looking glass on YouTube

By NICOLE GAUDIANO and DAN SHORTRIDGE
The News Journal

When a woman in a red shirt stood up in a Georgetown senior center on June 30 and began yelling at U.S. Rep. Mike Castle about President Barack Obama's birth certificate, her rant was caught on video and has since become a TV and Internet sensation.

Clips from it have been featured worldwide -- on CNN, MSNBC, the Drudge Report, Rush Limbaugh's radio talk show -- and catapulted the woman into the unlikely role as a spokeswoman for the "birther" movement, whose members question whether Obama is a native-born American and eligible to serve as president.

While there are some die-hard conservatives who truly believe Obama was born in Kenya and not Hawaii, the impact of the Georgetown video shows how public perceptions can be easily distorted in the digital age, said Josh Dyck, an assistant professor of American politics at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

"The existence of the Internet and the existence of cable news allow things like this to become sort of bigger than they are, quickly," he said. "There is this very strong anti-Obama sentiment that exists among conservatives in this country, and so anything that can be latched onto sort of manifests."

The star of the show -- known as "Crazy Eileen" to callers of a Sussex County talk radio station -- has gone into seclusion, declining interviews and avoiding publicity, even as previous statements by her have emerged referring to Obama as "the antichrist" and speaking of aliens and angels.

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"She doesn't want to be another 'Joe the Plumber' I think," said Dan Gaffney, program director and morning host at WGMD 92.7 FM.

Some who initially dismissed the claim about where Obama was born as a laughable political sideshow now wonder whether it's gotten out of control.

Mainstream Republicans who want the issue to go away are having a tough time stamping it out as the birthers resurface with assists from Limbaugh and CNN's Lou Dobbs.

Theories that Obama was born abroad abounded during the presidential campaign, even after an official Hawaii birth certificate was produced, along with August 1961 birth notices from two Honolulu newspapers. Numerous lawsuits and emergency appeals were lodged challenging Obama's eligibility to be president. All were rebuffed.

Allegations that Obama is not a U.S. citizen have been refuted by state officials in Hawaii, who say they've checked health department records and verified that Obama was born there Aug. 4, 1961.

The gunman who killed a security guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., in June was a birther, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization which tracks hate groups and extremist activity. The center Friday called for Dobbs' dismissal from CNN for his role in promoting the movement.

"This conspiracy theory was concocted by an anti-Semite and circulated by racist extremists who cannot accept the fact that a black man has been elected president," SPLC President J. Richard Cohen wrote in an e-mail to supporters.

But the point of view has persisted from the fall campaign through the first six months of the Obama administration. The national focus on birthers coincides with the president's approval ratings slipping below 50 percent for the first time last week.

Lindsay Hoffman, an assistant professor of communication at the University of Delaware, said the rapid spread of information online particularly lends itself to an echo chamber-like phenomenon.

"It becomes sort of a spiral," she said. "This information is passed along and passed along and passed along, and it reaches a culmination when you get traditional media coverage."

She and Dyck suggested that the recent attention on the birth certificate issue will ultimately amount to a flash in the pan.

"Do you really think that anything is going to come of this?" he asked. "No. It's a minor thing. No one cares. ... The people who care about this are people who don't like Obama and want to see him go down."

Hoffman agreed.

"These things get much more attention than they maybe would have before we had all this new media, [but] their lifespans are also shorter," she said. "I think this is a story for a few days, but then it sort of is back in the background."

The video of the Castle meeting, taken by someone in the audience, shows the woman holding a small American flag and what she said was her birth certificate, asking why people are ignoring Obama's birth. She charged that Obama is a citizen of Kenya, not the United States.

Castle, a Republican, was booed at the meeting while reiterating that Obama is a U.S. citizen.

The crowd applauded and cheered as the woman yelled, "I don't want this flag to change! I want my country back!"

The Constitution states that a person must be a "natural-born citizen" to be eligible for the presidency. The birthers contend that Obama's Hawaiian birth certificate is a fake, and many say he was actually born in Kenya, his father's homeland.

Limbaugh, the nationally syndicated radio talk show host, joked that Obama and God have something in common -- the lack of a birth certificate. Dobbs has broached the issue several times, saying at one point, "The questions won't go away."

And 10 Republican members of Congress have co-sponsored a bill that would require future presidential candidates to provide a copy of their original birth certificate.

Little is known about the woman who triggered the recent firestorm. Gaffney, the WGMD morning host, said she is believed to be from the Millsboro area.

According to another WGMD host, Jared Morris, she has been banned from calling the station -- known for its conservative leanings and hosts -- on several occasions.

In a call from a January show, on New Year's predictions, the woman discusses aliens, angels and the end of life on Earth, according to an audio clip Morris posted on YouTube this week.

In a videotaped introduction, Morris said the woman featured on the YouTube video from the meeting was a regular caller to his program.

"I want you guys to know exactly who you were cheering," Morris said in the clip.

She repeatedly has called Obama "the antichrist" on the airwaves, and "her phone calls have turned to faxes and threats," according to Morris.

"I have actually talked to an angel who came down in human form," she said during the Jan. 1 show. "We will have alien contact in October of this year, in the southwestern USA."

One prediction may seem ironic in light of the anger expressed in her diatribe toward Castle: "There will be peace among men and negativity will end," she told Morris.

But the tinges of extremism associated with the birther movement don't mean that everyone in the crowd felt the same way.

There has been a general increase of discontent with Castle among conservatives, said Eric Bodenweiser of Georgetown, a conservative activist who attended the meeting.

Bodenweiser, who is a leader of the Sussex County Community Organized Regiment, a new group that has gained strength in recent months, said the crowd got very worked up throughout the forum.

"I was waiting for the rotten eggs and tomatoes to come out -- it was ugly," he said. "People have gotten themselves worked up into a frenzy with the way things are going with our country."

He described Castle as beating around the bush on a variety of questions, on cap-and-trade, financial bailouts and the economic stimulus package.

"I've never been in a room where so many people had their hands up," Bodenweiser said. "The more he answered, the more, let's say, antagonistic it got."

The video of the exchange has gotten more than 600,000 hits on YouTube, the online video-sharing Web site.

"I'm fascinated by watching how viral it has become," said Gaffney, the talk show host.

He suggested the national press has used the video as a way of backing into coverage of the birthers.

It is "kind of a back-handed excuse to get it out there a little bit without looking crazy," he said. "They can say, 'Hey, these people are crazy.'"

everybody knows cnn's lou dobbs is a dope ...

every conservative publication ... dealt with this because it was raised as an issue ... and said there was nothing to it ... it's just a few cranks out there ... it's like when the networks bring on the three remaining klanners in america on tv ...

we knew this wasn't true because i promise you that hillary clinton and her very careful research would have found this out ... there's no way this would have escaped them and they would have pulled the trigger on it long before the election ...

and ann coulter bashes birthers:

What? Where am I?

Cue Twilight Zone theme.

Coulter, Huckabee, making sense?

I need to lie down for a minute, the room seems to be spinning for some reason...

So, come on, everybody, which way is Sarah gonna go?

So, come on, everybody, which way is Sarah gonna go?

the fringe of a fringe ... these are ludicrous claims, there is no factual basis for them ... why give the birthers any airtime?

... is it responsible for dobbs and others to go on the air, talk about these claims, demand proof, when we have seen a copy of the birth certificate? when hawaii officials say that barack obama was born there in 1961?

the clown show ...

some people are flat-earth people, they believe that, y'know, we never landed on the moon, but there's a racial element to this story too ... some people, quite frankly, cannot accept the fact we have a black president. so they are seeking, not all of them, but some of them, are seeking to delegitimize his presidency by claiming he didn't fulfill the constitutional mandate ... with much too much [assistance from the media].

cottage industry of conspiracy theorists ... why give a voice to that?

it's unethical for the media to be taking this issue and making it front and center when all of the proof is there to the contrary.

I believe with all my heart that this one is different from the "Moon Landing Hoaxers," the "Second Shooters" (JFK assassination), and the "9/11 Truthers".

Try to imagine a "town hall" meeting about health care, where a lady stands up and starts yelling about how Bush and Cheney were responsible for the 9/11 attacks, and seeing the people in the room cheer her, and boo a member of Congress, when he says "No, we really were attacked by al Qaeda."

This one is different, and it's metastasizing. This one is more dangerous than all the others.

Something tells me that Truthers would be quite prone to do that kind of thing, given that it was a charge against a sitting Administration, like this one.

I do agree that it's more dangerous than the rest, but for a very different reason. The other conspiracies accused Administrations of being dishonest, or even criminal, but *this* one accuses the current Administration of being illegitimate. In the former cases, there might be fringe elements that would like to see someone impeached for their crimes, but as the latter alleges that the President doesn't legitimately hold the office to begin with, that sets the stage for civil disobedience and/or conflict. Civil wars, after all, all begin with a dispute over the legitimacy and authority of the existing government. It's that kind of mindset that makes the Birther movement dangerous.

...The other conspiracies accused Administrations of being dishonest, or even criminal, but *this* one accuses the current Administration of being illegitimate. In the former cases, there might be fringe elements that would like to see someone impeached for their crimes, but as the latter alleges that the President doesn't legitimately hold the office to begin with, that sets the stage for civil disobedience and/or conflict. Civil wars, after all, all begin with a dispute over the legitimacy and authority of the existing government. It's that kind of mindset that makes the Birther movement dangerous.

What shocked me about Crazy Eileen is, the audience cheered her. An audience of mostly older, white Republicans, and the room exploded. They all booed Mike Castle. They all followed Crazy Eileen's lead in the Pledge. It wasn't Crazy Eileen who makes this one different, it was all the other people in the room.

Agreed as to the increased ease of fringe folks to find each other. If you ask the SPLC, I think they'll say that the internet has allowed hate groups to flourish by allowing individuals to find others with common attitudes, and I'd bet the ability to interact anonymously, or at least outside one's own real-life, helps too.

The advantage that the Birther conspiracy has over the Truthers is that taken in a certain light of ignorance, it's more plausible and easier for the unknowing to fall victim to.

The central Truther claim, that the President participated in the attacks of 9/11, is easily enough grasped as soon as you hear it, and will either be entertained or immediately dismissed. And it takes a certain kind of person already prone to widespread conspiracy theories to entertain it. There's very little complexity to the charge, and making the decision to dismiss it doesn't require any information you might lack. You either need to be willing to believe that the President would agree to blow up two American skyscrapers full of innocent Americans, or not.

The central Birther claim, that Obama is lying about his past and/or is refusing to release his birth certificate, is less likely to be *automatically* dismissed. At the very least, you have to have the pre-existing knowledge that Obama HAS released his birth certificate. And with minimal MSM coverage until recently, it's possible for people who are less internet-savvy to not know that. A crowd of old people at a town hall meeting in Delaware is precisely the type of crowd that probably doesn't turn to the internet for its information or fact-checking; they're probably operating on word-of-mouth, mixed with some talk radio. They may be honestly ignorant of what's been produced and what the nature of the controversy is.

And after a year of percolating, we can't ignore how many of the Birther claims are simply LIES now (the grandma tape, the Indonesian passport, the adoption, etc.). If a newbie heard those claims presented as facts, and didn't search out online verification on their own, it's not hard to see how the lies could be believed. This is why we need the media on this.

Heck, a co-worker of mine who's a die-hard Republican and an attorney, admitted to me that if it wasn't for me pointing out all the lies of the Birthers, HE might have bought into it all.

Are you sure the audience cheered? I took it that the people around her cheered and I took them for plants. Now that I see she is a local character I think it may have been wishful thinking on my part. Was it so clear to you all that the majority of the audience was cheering? I'll have to watch it again and see what I think now.

There was only a handful of idiots at the Castle debacle,

The crowd applauded and cheered as she yelled, “I don’t want this flag to change! I want my country back!”

Castle, attempting to correct her, said, “If you’re referring to the president there, he is a citizen of the United States.”

The crowd then heckled him as he reiterated that Obama is indeed a U.S. citizen.