Birther Skeet

Sometimes I think that president Obama might be having a little fun.

Perhaps you have seen the utter waste of air time and column inches that concerns Obama’s skeet shooting habits. In a January 27 interview for the magazine New Republic, the interviewer asked the president whether he had ever fired a gun. He responded, “Yes, in fact, up at Camp David, we do skeet shooting all the time.” This is a plausible claim, depending on one’s personal definition of “all the time.” It shouldn’t have caused a ripple in the media pool.

Of course, humanity being what it is, there was an eruption on the right. It was a ballistic version of the birther nonsense. Did the president really shoot skeet? Where were the photographs of him shooting skeet? Where was the evidence? The president’s press secretary was asked about it and gave a vague answer referring back to the president’s original statement. Fox “News” and Right Blogostan were in a spittle spraying frenzy, mocking and accusing.

Not one, not two, not three, not four, but five days later the White House released a photo on Flickr of the president firing a shotgun, presumably at a flying clay pigeon.

So then the Photoshop accusations began. The whole thing smells highly of birtherism, a concept acknowledged by administration allies.  From the New York Times: “Attn skeet birthers,” David Plouffe, the former White House senior adviser, wrote on Twitter as he posted a link to the photo. “Make our day — let the photoshop conspiracies begin!”

 Here’s my general take on these things:

 Obama: "I breathe air."

Conservative Screech-fest: "Show us the videos! Why are there no videos?"

Obama: "Here's a video of me breathing."

Conservative Screech-fest: "You're just moving your stomach in and out."

Obama: "A panel of scientists has attached air flow meters to my mouth and nostrils to show that I am breathing. Happy now?"

Conservative Screech-fest: "They were paid off to fake the results."

Obama: "Look, I've got an executive branch to run. Breathe into a paper bag until you stop hyperventilating and then find a therapist, ok?"

The question of why the White House waited five days to release the skeet photo reminds me of the long lag time between the beginning of the birther idiocy and the White House releasing the president’s long form birth certificate. (The authenticity of which, I should note, was then questioned by the same birthers.)

I’m thinking that Barack Obama ignored the birther movement at first because he rightly regarded it as trivial and foolish. Then he ignored it because he enjoyed watching his staunchest opponents stake their reputations on an obvious falsehood and then foam at the mouth about it on national television. Finally, right when most Americans were getting rightly sick of them, he snapped the rug out from under them.

With the skeet shooting thing, I can imagine him rolling his eyes and then saying to Jay Carney, “Say something vague and we’ll wait a few days. When the conservative pundits have enough drool on their ties, release a photo. Just one.”

There is a class of moronic bigots who wouldn’t believe that Obama was born in Hawaii if you showed a film of him emerging from his mother’s birth canal on Waikiki Beach, with hula dancers in the background and Don Ho standing next to her singing “Tiny Bubbles.” These same moronic bigots, and the servants of the arms manufacturers, are now crying “Photoshop!” I think Obama is more than ok with this. I think he’s smiling a little smile as his opponents dig themselves deeper.