Talk:Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Weazie (talk | contribs) at 18:04, 22 February 2022 (→‎Requested move 22 February 2022: oppose). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Long form certificate: Image anomalies potentially caused by Xerox character substitution bug

The discoverer of the Xerox character substitution bug, David Kriesel mentions and shows this in his talk. He proposes that the anomalies in the scan would not be from deliberate editing, but simply from a faulty compression algorithm at the time of document scanning.

I can't edit protected articles, but I thought this might be included. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kopoldiu (talk) 11:26, 17 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There's an argument that Kriesel can be considered an expert per WP:SPS, but without more coverage than this, I'd say it's out of WP:PROPORTION to include it. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 12:02, 17 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Odd Title?

The title "Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories" seems odd, given that the controversy was mainly about his place of birth rather than his citizenship. WOuldn't "Barack Obama birthplace conspiracy theories" make more sense? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:8801:12:F900:5904:4A32:2F1F:6E13 (talk) 03:45, 23 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Nobody would have been interested in his place of birth if it could not be used to dispute his status as a natural-born U.S. citizen and thus the legitimacy of his presidency. The citizenship is what this is really about, birth place is just a means to an end. (Vote fraud was another one of the straws the liars grasped at.) In that regard, birtherism is like climate change denial (see Climate change denial#Taxonomy of climate change denial: those who propagate them have the goal of making people believe in a false idea, and they use whatever they can as levers. The levers themselves are minor details. --Hob Gadling (talk) 09:05, 23 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
In addition, as the article explains, there were several beliefs about his citizenship, not all of which were dependent on his place of birth. This title includes those additional beliefs.--Weazie (talk) 18:06, 23 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Complete obfuscation of Sydney Blumenthal and Asher in Mcclatchy

The birtherism conspiracy theory actually originated from Hilary Clinton having her campaign advisor Sydney Blumenthal spreading a rumor to McClatchy former Bureau Chief James Asher that Obama was born in Kenya. McClatchy then sent investigative reporters to Kenya to try and find out this fact. All of this was done in the face of trying to paint dirt on Obama for his 2008 campaign, who she (as it turns out was correct in her estimation) considered to be a worthy opponent.

Source: https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election/article102828747.html

She denies this fact and so does Sydney Blumenthal, however, both Asher and his bureau chief for Nairobi, Shashank Bengali have come forward and confirmed this to be true. 

“Jim asked me to look into Obama’s ties to Kenya and sent a number of tips to check out and one of the things I looked into was the unfounded rumor that Obama was born in Kenya,” Bengali said, speaking from Afghanistan where he was on assignment for the Los Angeles Times, where he now works. “I don’t have any specific knowledge where that tip would have come from. Jim’s instructions were just to look at everything.”

"In an email in 2008, Asher forwarded to Bengali an email he had received from Blumenthal: “Jim: On Kenya, your person in the field might look into the impact there of Obama’s public comments about his father. I’m told by State Dept officials that Obama publicly derided his father on his visit there and that was regarded as embarrassing and crossing the line by Kenyans for whom respect for elders (especially the father, especially a Muslim father, in a patrilineal society) is considered sacrosanct. Sidney”

In a statement to McClatchy on Monday, Asher said:

“Blumenthal visited the Washington Bureau of McClatchy, where he and I met in my office. During that conversation and in subsequent communications, we discussed a number of matters related to Obama. He encouraged McClatchy to do stories related to Obama and his connections to Kenya.”

Asher said that as far as the “birther” issue, he has “nothing in writing,” but that he recalls the conversation. He has tweeted about his contact with Blumenthal twice since April. He also cited an email Monday from Bengali, who wrote: “What I remember is that you told me to look into everything about Obama’s family in Kenya. I can’t recall if we specifically discussed the birther claim, but I’m sure that was part of what I researched.”


Obviously not including this is problematic as it's been reported by McClatchy a reliable source and does not paint the full picture I will leave it to a more experienced editor to source this into the page but it absolutely warrants inclusion and will only demonstrate Wikipedia's bias if Sydney Blumenthal is not included. In the email quoted, you would have to argue or prove why James Asher would lie/makeup that state officials instructed him to look into Obama's family in Kenya.

Please before you link the Fact Check, please review this article from Observer - https://observer.com/2016/09/media-fact-checkers-erase-sidney-blumenthal-key-role-in-obama-birther-muck/ and make sure to take off your partisan goggles. Pformenti (talk) 04:26, 26 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Skimming through sources on this, it seems everyone is in agreement that Asher claimed Blumenthal talked to McClatchy about the birtherism rumours and got the Kenya reporter to investigate whether the rumours were true, and Blumenthal denies that that took place. While the reporter in question did investigate birtherism rumours (and found them to be false), there's no evidence in any of their written correspondence that Blumenthal ever actually mentioned it. I don't see any reliable sources disagreeing with that retelling of events. I also don't think your source is particularly worthwhile, given they complain that Politico didn't address new information in their fact checking piece that they did subsequently address in a followup published a WEEK before that piece at observer.com. If this story is included in this article it would have to be with extreme skepticism given it's based off the word of a single person, and I'm not at all convinced that including details of a saga reliable sources charactise basically as irrelevant hearsay would be due. Volteer1 (talk) 07:51, 16 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Concur. Ultimately, Asher makes an uncorroborated claim, and it would be undue to give undeserved weight to it. As for Asher's motive to lie, it is easy to infer the intent was to smear Clinton and Blumenthal. "Clinton started the birther lies" was a popular meme in 2016 because Clinton was running for the presidency. --Weazie (talk) 19:07, 16 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Based on this it definitely warrants mention that James Asher recalls Sydney Blumenthal starting the rumor. This is from Politico.

"McClatchy followed up with a story that quoted a statement from Asher, “During that meeting, Mr. Blumenthal and I met together in my office and he strongly urged me to investigate the exact place of President Obama’s birth, which he suggested was in Kenya. We assigned a reporter to go to Kenya, and that reporter determined that the allegation was false.”

Blumenthal swiftly denied pushing any birther rumors. And Asher, when pressed for more detail, was less definitive in an email to POLITICO.

“To the best of my recollection, these are the facts about my interaction with Sidney Blumenthal in late winter of 2008,” Asher said. “Blumenthal visited the Washington Bureau of McClatchy, where he and I met in my office. During that conversation and in subsequent communications, we discussed a number of matters related to Obama. He encouraged McClatchy to do stories related to Obama and his connections to Kenya.”

“On the birther issue, I recall my conversation with Blumenthal clearly,” Asher said, but acknowledged having “nothing in writing memorializing that conversation.”

https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election/article102354777.html

Are you telling me that Wikipedia gives this much scrutiny to first-hand accounts written in 3-4 reliable sources? The numerous articles/sections of controversies based on first-hand accounts regarding Trump would beg to differ. If we are going to set that as the standard then we need to stay consistent. We should just mention Asher and Blumenthal since there is already emails exchanged as highlighted by the LA Times that he asked their Kenya correspondent to find out about his father and cousin, see below:

“Jim: On Kenya, your person in the field might look into the impact there of Obama’s public comments about his father. I’m told by State Dept officials that Obama publicly derided his father on his visit there and that was regarded as embarrassing and crossing the line by Kenyans for whom respect for elders (especially the father, especially a Muslim father, in a patrilineal society) is considered sacrosanct. Sidney.”

https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-blumenthal-birther-20160919-snap-story.html A second email, Asher said, involved possible “connections between Obama and Raila Odinga, who had described himself as Obama’s cousin and would run for president of Kenya” and links between Odinga and “controversial Muslim groups.”

The “person in the field” at the time was McClatchy’s Nairobi-based correspondent, Shashank Bengali, who is now a foreign correspondent for The Times. He looked into Blumenthal’s tips at the time and found they did not check out.

“Asher assigned me to look into everything related to Obama in Kenya,” Bengali said in an email.

Pformenti (talk) 22:36, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Trump as the "most prominent" advocate

Are we sure that Trump was the "most prominent" advocate? It seems like an opinion given in a book written primarily about Trump rather than primarily about the conspiracy theory. "A prominent" advocate or even "one advocate" would seem more neutral to me. TWM03 (talk) 19:49, 21 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Trump was certainly "a prominent" advocate (he eventually became President of the United States, after all); if "prominent" means "someone the average person would be likely to recognize in the birther realm", there's a good case to be made for him to even be the "most prominent". This is almost WP:BLUE -- who else did Obama actually acknowledge by name on this topic?
On the other hand, if "prominent" means something more like "most prominent inside of birther circles", I'd think that title might go to Sheriff Joe, or Orly Taitz, or any of several other people called out in the article. Trump didn't even appear on the birtherism radar until March 2011, halfway through Obama's first term.
But having him as "a prominent" rather than "the most prominent" advocate seems like an acceptable edit, and I think in context it makes sense for him to be considered very prominent, even if, all things considered, he didn't really put in the time.--NapoliRoma (talk) 23:34, 22 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for replying. My interpretation of the statement was the second one you mentioned, I had not really considered that it might mean "the most prominent individual who also happened to be a birther conspiracy theorist". However, even in this interpretation I still think the "most prominent" label is unnecessary as anyone who knows who Trump is understands that few people are more prominent than him and could easily come to the same conclusion themselves. I still think my edits are an improvement, though maybe "notably" or something similar should be added to the statement in the introduction to clarify why Trump would be singled out. TWM03 (talk) 00:26, 23 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 22 February 2022

Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories → Birther movement – This own article in the first paragraph says this is commonly called the Birther movement by WP:RS. With this fact in mind we should go ahead and change it to Birther movement under WP:COMMONNAME. Also this topic is bit more expansive than purely 'citizenship' as the title put's it. It's also about religion and birth place, which isn't necessarily tied to citizenship, especially in the minds of conspiracy theorist. Overall, this title isn't particularly effective and there is a common name for this situation. Iamreallygoodatcheckers (talk) 02:21, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose The current title is a model of clarify. The proposed target looks like a spelling mistake. Obama has interest outside the USA. American neologisms are unlikely to be known outside the USA. Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:32, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Proposed name is vague and unnecessary. --jpgordon𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇 15:14, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Birthplace and citizenship are very much tied together in the United States, and the article is about a former U.S. president and U.S. law. The article title informs the reader it is about beliefs about Obama, and not about citizenship generally. This article's title is also intended as a compliment to the article Barack Obama religion conspiracy theories. --Weazie (talk) 18:03, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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