How Osama bin Laden Killed the Birther Movement

As sometimes happens with zombies, the Birthers may be the last to know that they no longer exist.   Last week, the President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief was immersed in the planning and directing of the most daring raid ever undertaken in recent memory.  Meeting with intelligence and military advisers, the President had momentous decisions to make, which would lead "Team Six," a military unit recruited from the Navy SEALS, to land helicopters on the roof of a residential compound outside the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, and take out Osama bin Laden. 

However on Tuesday, America's first black Head of State had to step back from the real duties of the Oval Office, and be subjected to one of the most shameful spectacles in the history of American presidential politics.  At the insistence of Donald Trump, acting as mouthpiece for the birther movement, the American Commander-in-Chief had to call a press conference, releasing to the public, a long form birth certificate to prove his American citizenship.

   In the furor surrounding bin Laden's death, some Birthers even trumpeted their transformation into "deathers."  That is, they refuse to believe that the President led an operation that captured and killed Osama bin Laden.  But a movement that until last week captured forty percent of the Republican electorate will soon find that it inhabits the realm of the living dead.

Like it or not, President Obama has become a national hero, drawing praise even from the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Rudy Guiliani.   GOP politicians will try to expunge all evidence from the public record of the moral cowardice that caused so many to embrace the birthers, or stradddle that barbed-wire fence.   And maybe, (see earlier post), the nation may have grown up a few notches and learned a few  lessons about the true nature of racism.