Curse of the Internet

I am about to curse the Internet, even though these words will be read exclusively on it.

Still, here goes.

An e-mail dropped into my in-box the other day from an Amarillo resident. It contained a video of one-time Illinois senatorial candidate, Alan Keyes, who trotted out the right wing’s canard questioning whether President Obama is a real American. Keyes — who lost to Obama in the 2004 U.S. Senate race in Illinois by 43 percentage points — questions whether the president is legally qualified to serve and wonders whether he was born in Kenya, the home country of the president’s late father.

I responded to this acquaintance, calling Keyes a “brilliant lunatic.” I then told this gentleman that Obama’s citizenship isn’t an issue. The Secret Service had done its homework on the man and determined that he was born in Hawaii, in 1961, just as he has said. Obama’s citizenship isn’t an issue, no matter how much his enemies seek to make it one.

My acquaintance wrote back and said his wife had sent the e-mail to me by mistake. But …

Then he told me about an Internet video purporting to show the president’s paternal grandmother — “not the white one,” as he called her — saying how she was present at baby Barack’s birth in Kenya. My acquaintance said he is unsure about the video’s veracity and wouldn’t claim it to be totally true, yet it’s out there for all the world to see, he said. I should judge for myself, he added.

No thank you.

I do not need to troll the ‘Net looking to validate these rumors. Their sources’ sole intent is to destroy the presidency of a man they detest. We’ve been down this road already many times throughout history.

I will rely on what what I believe is a solid position: The Secret Service no doubt has heard these claptrap rumors about Barack Obama and has checked them out. I am convinced beyond any doubt that the crack security arm of the Treasury Department would have blown the whistle on Obama had it discovered any truth to the rumor that the president is unqualified to serve based on his citizenship at birth.

But that won’t stop the goofball bloggers and the ‘Net surfers who believe only those things that suit their philosophy.

They, just like our Amarillo resident, will send them through cyberspace hoping against hope that someone will prove that the Obama rumors are all true. Me? I’ll stick with the findings of the spooks who comprise the nation’s vast intelligence network who confirm the actual truth, which is that President Obama is being pilloried by liars — who are enabled by the Internet.

It goes with the territory

It only took 70-some days for the following complaint to come in.

The newspaper’s editorial cartoons are too harsh, too tough, unfair and demeaning to President Obama — or so says a reader. Is this Groundhog Day or what? Didn’t I just go through an eight-year running battle with readers who said the same thing about the cartoons we ran that lampooned President Bush?

The reader took serious exception to the cartoon that ran in today’s paper. As you can see, it shows Michelle and Barack Obama offering a “fist bump” to Queen Elizabeth. “At best it is in very poor taste; at worst it is a mean-spirited racial slur against the president of the United States and his wife,” my letter-writing acquaintance stated. “I have instructed my secretary to call today and cancel my subscription to what I have lately referred to as the ‘Redneck Rag,'” he said.

Well.

It seems that Democratic and Republican partisans have something in common after all: They hate it when “their guy” becomes the object of cartoonists’ humor.

These cartoons go with the high office they occupy. I do not believe for a single second that President Obama is upset with this cartoon, any more than I thought that President Bush got hot and bothered over the cartoons that lampooned him. These folks run for office expecting to be blistered by cartoonists.

The problem, though, lies with their devotees who haven’t yet developed the kind of rhino hide required to view these illustrated commentaries for what they are: attempts by the artists, in the age-old journalistic tradition, to “comfort the afflicted the afflict the comfortable.”

And so, the argument with hyper-sensitive readers goes on.

Let all ideas roam freely

West Texas A&M University might find itself being criticized unjustly.

Then again, it might not.

WT has invited former Bush administration political guru Karl Rove to be its featured speaker next month just ahead of the university’s commencement. Rove, known as the mastermind of President Bush’s two victories in 2000 and 2004 is either a shining light or the Prince of Darkness, depending on your point of view. He is a controversial figure. His allies revere him. His enemies loathe him.

It’s the enemies who will might make their feelings known more vociferously.

I have this word of advice: Let the man speak.

Whether one agrees with Rove’s politics, he is of enormous consequence. WT is right to bring someone of Rove’s political heft to the Panhandle, where it would figure that he would have many more fans than foes. His candidate, after all, did win more than 75 percent of the Panhandle’s vote in two presidential elections. A source at WT told me this morning that she’s heard no expressions of support, only the faint rumblings of discontent.

So …

Karl Rove is set to speak to some newly minted college grads. He deserves to be heard. If he says something outrageous, then he’ll be taken to task for it. If he imparts wisdom worth taking out into the world, then the students will owe him a debt of thanks — and WT officials will have done their job.

Government efficiency

The late comic George Carlin made famous a number of oxymorons. “Jumbo shrimp” and “military intelligence” come to mind.

State Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D- El Paso, has given new meaning to a yet another mutually exclusive term: government efficiency.

My colleague Karen Welch posted a blog on this topic already this week, but it’s too good to pass up yet another shot at Sen. Shapleigh.

Shapleigh felt compelled to send out 15 heavy packets to reporters and editors at the Globe-News, including eight folks who no longer work here. I was not among the recipients, by the way — durn it!

They contained a report titled “Texas Borderlands: Frontier of the Future.” They comprised 486 pages. They cost the state, meaning taxpayers, a lot of money to mail out.

In 25 years of observing Texas government — from the Gulf Coast to the High Plains — I’ve never before seen such a saturation bombing of material from a lawmaker to a media outlet so far from his home district — although I’m sure someone has done it somewhere. Shapleigh said he wanted to provide “good information” across the state. Fair enough.

But here’s how Shapleigh can save the rest of us some money: Update his mailing list. A simple phone call, or e-mail, could have helped Shapleigh’s staff determine who still works here and who’s moved on. He could have sent, oh, maybe two of those packets instead of 15.

Government efficiency? It was missing in action at Sen. Shapleigh’s office.

George Carlin would have had a field day.