Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah's notorious thin skin about criticism of him and his website shows up yet again in his Feb. 15 WorldNetDaily column -- as if his childish opening reference to the Wall Street Journal as the "Wall Street Urinal" wasn't a clue.
This time Farah has his undies in a bunch about WSJ columnist James Taranto's claim that WND publishes "demonstrable falsehoods about Barack Obama's birthplace," specifically "claim[ing] falsely that Obama was born outside the U.S." Cue Farah in freak-out mode:
I immediately challenged Taranto to provide just one example of WND ever claiming Obama was born outside the country. I have not heard from him with such an example, nor do I expect to hear from him – for the simple reason it has never happened.
Be my guest – search for the accusation in WND's free public archives. You will not find any such accusation or characterization by WND or any of its staff writers, columnists or even letter writers. I invite the George Soros-sponsored Media Matters organization to assist Taranto in his futile search. They won't find any such assertion in the hundreds of stories WND has published seeking the truth about Obama's still mysterious origins.
By the way, it would not be a lie to say Obama was born in a foreign country. It would just be an unsubstantiated assertion. However, it is a lie to say WND has made such an assertion.
Well, I work for Media Matters, so that may be close enough for Farah's purposes. It's an indisputable fact that WND -- including Farah himself -- has characterized Obama as being born outside the U.S. Here are just a few examples:
- "The only living person who claims publicly to have been present at Obama's birth is his paternal grandmother, Sarah Obama, who says the birth took place in Mombassa, Kenya."-- Farah, July 23, 2009
- "Of course, the only living person in the world who claims to have been present for Obama's birth is his paternal grandmother, Sarah Obama, who says it took place in Mombasa, Kenya." -- Farah, July 15, 2009
- "California attorney Orly Taitz, who has filed a number of lawsuits demanding proof of Barack Obama's eligibility to serve as president, has released a copy of what purports to be a Kenyan certification of birth and has filed a new motion in U.S. District Court for its authentication. ... WND was able to obtain other birth certificates from Kenya for purposes of comparison, and the form of the documents appear to be identical." -- WND, Aug. 2, 2009
(Of course, the claim attributed to Obama's grandmother has been discredited, and the "Kenyan birth certificate" was ultimately found to be a fake, but not before WND published it without bothering to verify it first.)
We can keep going if Farah wants. For example, here's a Nov. 23 column by Jim Fletcher calling Obama "the Man from Kenya" (something he does again in columns on July 19 and Sept. 14).That pretty much destroys Farah's claim that there is no "such accusation or characterization by WND or any of its staff writers, columnists or even letter writers" that Obama was born outside the U.S.
Farah frequently claims that he and WND have never claimed or suggested that Obama wasn't born in the U.S. He's lying every single time he does so.
