Topic: WorldNetDaily
How desperate are the birthers at WorldNetDaily getting? They're turning against longtime right-wing allies that won't join their conspiracy.
In his Feb. 10 column, Joseph Farah lashed out at Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly for ridiculing his obsession, insisting that they're the real conspiracy theorists because they think President Obama benefits from such a fringe obsession.
This was followed, almost as in lockstep, by a Feb. 11 WND column by Farah's successor at the Western Journalism Center, Floyd Brown, who similarly bashed Beck and O'Reilly, then added Andrew Breitbart to the mix. Brown lovingly calls Farah "heroic" for pursuing this obsession.
But Brown also seems to be turning his back on the so-called investigation the WJC has done on the subject. Brown writes that a curiously unnamed investigator for WJC found that "It would have been very easy for a relative to forge an absent parent's signature [to a Hawaiian birth certificate in 1961] to a form and mail it in." But this seems to contradict the WJC's previous claim that Hawaii would not issue a birth certificate for a child born out of state that claimed the child was born in Hawaii.
Further, just because something is theoretically possible does not mean it's likely, as Brown and the WJC seems to be suggesting regarding Obama. There's no evidence whatsoever that any member of Obama's family had any motivation to ensure Barack was designated as Hawaii-born if he was not.
This is the kind of conspiracy-mongering that is causing the likes of Beck, O'Reilly and Breitbart to remain at arm's length from birthers. But Farah and Brown would like to pretend otherwise. And WND's abrogation of the basic tenets of journalism by letting the first word about Tancredo's remarks on its website come in the form of Tancredo defending in a column WND is paying him to write is nothing less than appalling.
