This is what happens when lies get "out there" and become part of mainstream discourse

We're all familiar with the various smear e-mails about Barack Obama that circulated prior to the election. We're even now familiar with the kind of hysterical ranting to which Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity have been resorting in an effort to keep their frothing minions whipped into a frenzy. The problem with this is that once an idea gets "out there", even if it's utterly false, it becomes part of the mainstream discourse and becomes simply "an alternate view." It doesn't matter if it's an outright lie or fabrication, it's "an alternate view." This kind of factual relativism is a cancer on the body politic. We all have friends who have whispered to us "I heard that he's not really a citizen" or "He's a Muslim." They've gotten the e-mails and chosen to believe them.

The other day we were treated to the lunatic ravings of Alan Keyes, picking up the kind of crap we saw in these e-mails, claiming that Barack Obama was born in Nairobi to a mother who was "too young to transmit American citizenship" -- a statement that is not only utter horseshit, but also laughably implies that American citizenship is some kind of virus, like AIDS, that is "transmitted" from mother to child:

It's one thing when a known nutjob like Keyes spouts crap like this, but once it is "out there", it becomes "truthiness" -- believed by those who want to believe it whether or not it is true.

And so we have the "Obama is a Kenyan" meme coming up again, repeated now not just by Alan Keyes, but by a United States Senator, Richard Shelby:

nother local resident asked Shelby if there was any truth to a rumor that appeared during the presidential campaign concerning Obama’s U.S. citizenship, or lack thereof.

“Well his father was Kenyan and they said he was born in Hawaii, but I haven’t seen any birth certificate,” Shelby said. “You have to be born in America to be president.”

The birth certificate has been produced and verified, but that is not enough for these people. Because they learned under George W. Bush that facts don't matter, truth is what's in your gut. That's why Bush is able to believe that his presidency was a success and that whatever problems there are now are not because of his policies, but because of mistakes of his predecessors. They learned that if you call someone a terrorist, that means he is a terrorist, regardless of whether there is any evidence.

The Republican Party now gets its marching orders from right-wing talk radio, and the insatiable maw of the talk radio audience must be constantly filled with swill, lest the genre perish. And when a Senator gives voice to that swill, it gives it a legitimacy that swill does not deserve.

I'm with Aravosis on this one. I won't be convinced that Richard Shelby isn't a pedophile until I see something proving that he isn't.

(h/t)