This past week I went on to YouTube, which I don't do very often. I saw a caption for a video clip with the title, "Jon Voight's Delusional Hate-Filled Rant About Obama." What I expected was to see the actor jumping up and down on a couch, tearing at his hair or something. I'm not sure why the title peeked my interest - I'm usually not into sensational journalism, but I was having a human moment of morbid curosity. I watched the vid. clip, an interview between Huckabee and Voight on FoxNews, and saw a calm discussion of Obama's national health care proposal. A better title would have been, "Huckabee-Voight Fox Interview Prompts Very Strong Reactions from YouTube Viewers." Now, some of those comments were definitely, in cyberspeak, hate-filled rants. I posted a couple of comments, one about Obama's place of birth at Kapiolani Women/Children's Hospital here in Honolulu, and was almost verbally assaulted by one very adamant fellow commentator. He used the four letter "f" word in a very contemptuous manner in telling me, in summary, to get a clue.
I'm not a young woman anymore, and I don't remember a president in my years on this planet being so scrutinized about his documentation of birth to prove he is even minimally qualified to be the US President. I naively thought the debate had been put to bed with the issue of a birth certificate on file with the Hawaiian state health department. NOT! Online, his birth certificate is being poo-pooed as fraudulent. This response is my opinion on the matter.
Firstly, Hawaii had only been a state less than 2 whole years when its newly official statehood health department issued his birth certificate in 1961. It doesn't have the doctor or hospital's name on it, so it must be fake. The state seal isn't "official" enough. Well, I come from a small town in upstate New York, and my birth certificate doesn't have the name of my mother's doctor or the hospital I was born in either. Guess I'm an illegal citizen, too, although I have relatives, on both branches of my family tree, maternal and paternal, who fought in the Revolutionary War as patriots. Guess I need to have those documents carbon dated to prove I'm the real deal. Only a few blocks from the hospital where Pres. Obama was born is where his beloved, recently departed grandmother lived for years. I know the apartment complex. When I first moved to Hawaii over 20 years ago, I lived a few doors down the block. I wonder how far down the block that rude, cussing commentator has ever lived? If you've never lived in Hawaii for a period of 5+ years, in with locals, in the thick of things, you'll never have any idea of how things are done here. It is much more laid back, even now, much less 40+ years ago, than the mainland.
I have to ask, why Obama? Is it because his name is so "foreign", Barak Hussein Obama, his father was a very dark skinned Kenyan and a Muslim? The father must be a threat to America, if he is from a third world, Muslim country, right? God forbid, he could be a terrorist! That's as fair as believing that all Christians must be extremists because of the Branch Davidians or Jim Jones. And that is the father, not our duely elected president. Or is this still sour grapes that Obama won the election much more easily than the opposition anticipated? Some brown skinned guy originally from the hicks of Hawaii. A copy of birth certificate is at www.FightTheSmears.com
Oh, and then, in the Voight vid posts, one guy is hashing over what a "natural born" citizen is. He's come up with a definition that it is someone born of two American citizens. I've read that part of the US Constitution, about the requirements to be elected as president, over and over, and I don't see that qualifiying clause. I've even read copies of correspondence between the participants of the 1787 Constitution Convention, and all I can make out is that a "natural born citizen" is someone who is born in a US state, no statement as to the candidate's parentage. I guess in 1787, if based on parentage, none of them would have qualified as president, since they were all, technically, offspring of subjects of the British crown and thus, under international law, at that time, under British jurisdiction. Those defiant outlaws of international law!! Of Vattel's Frenchman's "Law of Nations" written in 1883. Ain't that America!! The wild, wild West!! I see no amendment to the Constitution about parentage after 1883, but if anyone out there has the time and energy to get that part of the Constitution amended and radified, you have my undying respect, even if I strongly disagree with your politics. Vattel also states, "a nation is the mistress of her own actions". If the US felt so subject to international law, we would be more compliant with the United Nations, and we're as maverick with them as with any other international body attempting to guide and unifiy international legality, such as the Geneva Convention. NO, I'm not going there in this post.
Again, why Obama? He is change, if for no other reason than he is not what has looked like, felt like, sounded like US leadership since the beginning of this country. Seventy-five years from now, when we've had a couple of brown skinned presidents, and even a woman president, all this insanity over Obama will seem like a bad parody, but right now, it feels sad, sad that this country, that represents change and freshness, innovation and thinking outside of the box, is being the very antithesis of change, xenophobic.
I'm so very blessed to be living in America, in a state where I'm a minority, a white woman, and that I have mostly brown, tan and golden skinned friends that I eat with, cuddle with, laugh with and yes, fight with. It has expanded my world in ways I never even dreamed of as a white child in a totally white, quite isolated small town on the mainland.
Obama's policies, his leadership, his behavior, domestically, is one thing, but to attack who he is, an American citizen, is heartbreaking. Anyway, my heart is broken, but as a very wise friend of mine here in Hawaii says broken hearts mend; broken spirits, not so much. I hope the spirit of America isn't being broken.
