Finding hypocrisy in politics — on either side — isn’t difficult, but it’s seldom been easier to point out than in the recent case of U.S. Army Major Stephen Cook. Cook, as you probably know, has refused orders to redeploy to Afghanistan because he believes President Obama was born in Kenya. That would mean Obama is not a natural-born U.S. citizen and unqualified to be president. Cook believes he doesn’t have to obey orders from a faux Commander in Chief. Cook is what’s come to be called a “birther.”
Nevermind that Obama’s birth certificate was certified as genuine by the state of Hawaii or that his birth notice was in the local paper at the time of his birth — in Birther World, Obama has not proven he was born in the U.S. Of course, they offer no proof to support their counter-claims, just innuendo and repeated rumors.
It’s pretty nuts, but that’s okay. There have always been loonies and conspiracy theorists among us. It’s a proud American tradition. Not much anyone can do about it. What bugs me, though, is, as I said, the hypocrisy. When some U.S. soldiers advocated withdrawal from Iraq a couple years back, Rush Limbaugh labeled them “phony soldiers.” Fox News pundits, including Ann Coulter, called them “traitors.” When decorated war veteran Rep. John Murtha raised objections to the Iraq war, Coulter said he should be fragged. Now, Cook is refusing deployment to a war zone. Surely, that’s a phony soldier’s traitorous act, worthy of fragging, right?
Nope. Instead, Fox News has been posting at least one “birther” story every day. (The latest featured an accompanying picture of Obama in native Kenya garb, taken during trip to Africa a few years back.) Cook is treated as a noble patriot, standing up for what he believes in. Apparently, the suits at Fox believe that the more credence they can lend to this phony birther story, the better their viewers will like it. As I said, there have always been nuts and conspiracy theorists among us — they just never had their own “news” network before.
