Obama and Madame Defarge

On October 6 the Washington Post reported on Dr. Orly Taitz, the California dentist and attorney from the former Soviet republic of Moldova who is perhaps the fiercest adversary of Obama in the “battle of the birth certificate.” The lengthy article contained numerous exaggerations and inaccuracies. The Post called the Taitz charge that “Nobody has seen proper [birth] documents” a “breathtaking misstatement” when in fact Taitz is correct: no one has been shown Obama’s original long form birth certificate. “Obama’s staff has indeed provided an official record showing the president was born in Hawaii,” defended the Post—which then refutes its own statement by admitting that the document is a “computer-generated official certification of live birth,” not a typical long form birth certificate. All that has been “shown” has been a (purportedly forged) image on leftist-sponsored Internet web sites—hardly proof, but sufficient for the Post.

The article ridiculed Taitz’s definition of natural born citizen as persons born on U.S. soil to citizen-parents. That is hardly an outrageous interpretation, and is supported by the contemporary writings of the nation’s Founding Fathers—which the Post no doubt did not bother to research.

The author then predictably relied on the race card to discredit Taitz, stating, “One might argue that her extra super-duper burden of proof has a racial dimension to it”—but offered no substantiation of her reflexive charge.

As if a charge of racism is not enough, the Post blatantly suggested that Taitz is motivated by “…the PayPal button at the top of her Web site.” (Perhaps if the Washington Post had used some of its significant financial resources to research Obama’s past before the election, it would not now need to express its angst over “cluttering up the American court system.”)

And while the Post took delight in noting that Judge Clay D. Land “excoriated” Taitz in the dismissed Rhodes v. Obama lawsuit, it only casually mentions that “a hearing on a California case took place yesterday.” It apparently did not occur to the article’s author that her readers might be interested in knowing that Judge David O. Carter did not dismiss the case Barnett v. Obama and even scheduled a January trial date—much to the frustration of Obama’s taxpayer-paid attorneys.

The description of Taitz—“charming but ferocious tenacity, part Meg Ryan, part Madame Defarge”—may be exactly what makes her most dangerous to Obama. By failing to take the attractive, Russian-accented blonde seriously, he may be underestimating her determinedness. After all, the revolution in which Charles Dickens’ villain Madame Defarge participated was successful.

Don Fredrick

October 10, 2009