“Xerox” and “Kleenex” are words that have taken on a generic meaning beyond their specific product brands. Is this happening with “birther”? Case in point is an article at the Huffington Post titled, “Fox News Jumps on Board the New Birther Meme: Hillary’s Brain.”
The “show us the birth certificate” conspiracy theory of the 2016 campaign has begun, this time with medical records.
This time doubters are demanding a copy of Clintons brain MRI. I can understand the liberal media (and I think I can use that term at least for the Huffington Post) wanting to tar conservatives with the “birther label.” I wish they wouldn’t. I’d like to keep the birther brand specific.
I like to see “birther” taking on the more general meaning. Like many people, I have never thought of birtherism as being fundamentally about whether Barack Obama is eligible to be President of the United States. To me, it’s a rabidly hate-driven movement based on completely absurd, often contradictory, verifiably incorrect pretend ‘facts’ and theories cooked up in a desperate, mind-numbing attempt to avoid facing reality. I don’t have any problem at all with other movements or events being characterized ‘birther’ if they exhibit these same characteristics.
At this point in time “birther” speaks volumes and most people understand it means exactly what Thinker says.
It’s also easier than trying to remember if “batshit” is one word or two with or without a hyphen: As in “batshit crazy” or “bat shit crazy” or “bat-shit crazy”.
Easy solution: just go with “guano”.
Birtherism does go further than trutherism in the willingness of the birthers to believe and endlessly repeat all sorts of despicable lies that have nothing to do with eligibility. But I’m with Doc C. in thinking that the word doesn’t apply to Hillary since there are no false claims about her birth.
Meh, at least it helps ID the crazies and gives me something to debunk. Birthers are getting boring.
In 2016 we’ll have the “brainers” movement…which will be pretty brainless, like the birthers.
Guess Doc will have to start a Clinton Conspiracy Theories site.
Birthers are not “Obama truthers,” and these people are not “Hillary birthers.”
I do like “brainers.”
Don’t forget the oft-repeated one that her mother was a dog (thus making her one, too) 😉
Except that they’ll inevitably start referring to their debunkers as “no-brainers”.
No problem with that, since debunking them will be a no-brainer. 😀
Noooooooooooooooooooooooo! I have better things to do with my golden years.
“Brainers” was my first thought as well. Using “Birthers” like that is sloppy at best, and certainly inappropriate. “Truthers” seems to have a wide application, as in “9/11 Truthers,” “Sandy Hook Truthers…” Perhaps “Hillary’s Brain Truthers?”
Speaking of which, it’s an interesting phenomenon, almost Nietzschean* really, how people that were once “Deniers,” as in “Moon Landing Deniers” or “Holocaust Deniers,” have cleverly gained the upper hand (or so they think) by calling themselves not “Deniers” but “Truthers.”
Denying something happened is less appealing (and harder) than claiming to be revealing the “Truth” that something else happened instead. There is often annoying evidence (like film footage of and eyewitness testimony about the Nazi Death Camps) that makes the subject hard to deny, but claiming to be exposing an alternate “Truth” can easily include a tall tale of how the evidence was falsified by nefarious forces to appear factual.
The term also carries an implied narrative that the “Truth” has not come out yet; further, that someone is trying to prevent it from coming out. That casts “Truthers” in the role of savior (rescuing Truth, Justice, and the American Way) and hero (because of how Brave they are in confronting the Evil and Powerful (albeit imaginary) “Conspiracy of Silence”). It also enables “Concern Trolling,” because they can say “I’m only trying to get at the truth” even though that assumes facts not in evidence.
In short, it lets them spread vile, filthy, seditious lies while seemingly trailing clouds of glory.
*and here I’m thinking along the lines of The Genealogy of Morals wherein Judeo-Christianity flips the old semantics of Good and Bad on its head… Anciently, Good meant successful, high-born, clean, influential, educated, etc. while Bad meant the poor and dirty, ignorant and often criminal, unwashed masses. It is of monumental historic import that Good was made to mean “the meek, the humble, the common clay,” and the title Bad began to be ascribed to the powerful, wealthy, blue-blooded elite. (It’s 30+ years since I read Nietzsche, but I think I’ve done justice to the basic idea.)
On the plus side, they’ve likely short down Cruz as a candidate for 2016.
As for the Hillary MRI, I’m sure that Orly already has a sworn affidavit from the temporary part-time assistant garbage and trashcan remover at the Falkland Islands coastguard imaging department to confirm that it’s a forgery.
Or just dust off one from the ’90s and carry on LOL
I’d like to believe that this doesn’t have legs … but any day now 😉 there’ll be mutations … Hillary is an android … Hillary was reporting in for adjustment to her Soros Uplink Module …. Hillary was in for coverup touchup to reptlian concealer ….
We could start rumor that Hillary was born Harry, and had a sex change operation specifically so she could be the first woman President….
That could technically still be a “birth” issue….
Brilliant. If they can believe Michelle was a man, why not?
Looking at the title, I can’t decide whether we should be asking for legal briefs, or a script treatment.
I guess the “v.”, rather than “Vs”, leans toward the former, but each alternative has its appeal…
I’m with Doc, the Red Rooster and Thomas—“Hillary birthers” is just sloppy all around. I’d say just go with “brainers” if this is the route they’re going to take (which I think is probable).
Or “braindeaders”.
So all the people who suddenly became political historians are going to be neurologists now?
Meeeeeh,
The issue with Hillary-Haters not being labelled Birfers is that they are fuindamentally the same brain dead morons just changing “scary black moslem” for “scary lesbian woman”.
The hate, bile, insanity, thought processes, lies and grifting will be done by the very same people.
Corsi, Farrah, Orly, Kerchner, Fitzfundfilcher, Arapio, ORYR etc will just re-do and return but now make up sh*t about a different Democrat.
Now, the phrase Birther has specific connotations outside of just Obama and I don’t think these feckers should be allowed to shed their skins and avoid the label of rabid idiot
“Scanners” from “brain scan.”
“Brainers” is too generous. They’d probably like it, think they sounded all smart.
“Headers” on the other hand …
“no-brainers” works for me
It wouldn’t be sloppy or inappropriate if enough people agreed that the meaning of the word ‘birther’ has changed to the more generic version that it appears to be morphing into. Word meanings don’t obey laws of nature. Words mean what people say they mean. I think that the change in the meaning of the word birther is unstoppable because we don’t have a better word to describe the particular phenomenon we call ‘birtherism.’ If there were a better word, we’d be using it. But it’s a relatively new phenomenon as a social-media-enabled popular movement and the lexicon around it is just now being developed. I think this change will happen. Our grandchildren will not know why all RWNJ conspiracy theorists are called birthers and the term will not seem at all strange to them.
Will be interesting to see if the political landscape has been permanently changed by birtherism (in that these whacky conspiracy theories will be much more common than before).
After all, previous conspiracy theories were the usual NWO stuff, with presidents being accused of being Mafia-style politicians who had people killed to further their “one world government” agenda.
Birtherism was the first pseudo-mainstream movement (in the sense that even the big names flirted with it) that was based entirely on whackiness.