Selling nuts: how the media mainstreams the fringe

Selling Nuts

by digby

So Donald Trump decides to make a jackass out of himself by pimping the totally illogical birther nonsense and so the mainstream media starts covering it because it's "out there."

The result is a trainwreck:

In a Friday appearance on CNN’s John King USA, Birtherhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif queen Orly Taitz rolled over the eponymous host, and beleaguered guest Cornell Belcher, like that boulder in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Taitz emptied clip after clip of false and unsubstantiated claims at a helpless John King, but just when all seemed lost, King fought back with his own daisy-cutter of crazy, suggesting that President Obama has been rebutting Birthers in code.



Click here to see the full catastrophe.King ends up saying that when Obama says something like "we are all Americans" it's a calculated push back to these nutcases. The fact that every politician since time began has been using similar language is apparently irrelevant.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

People think this is funny, but it really isn't. This is how half the nation winds up being a bunch of fact-free idiots, ready to waste the country's time and resources on silly witch hunts and media circuses. This is a nonsensical claim as anyone with a brain knows. But when John King allows this nut to spout off without effectively rebutting her there is a not incidental number of people who apply the "where there's smoke there's fire" logic and conclude that there must be something weird or John King wouldn't be covering it.

If some celebrity halfwit like Trump is trying to boost his own profile with junk like this and the media feels it cannot ignore it, they have an obligation to affirmatively and strongly rebut this nonsense. This is how presidents end up getting impeached over blow jobs. You think it's ridiculous now, but wait until term two when they have completely lost their minds.


.