OBAMA'S PARENTS' MARRIAGE HAS INSPIRED TRUTHERISM, BECAUSE OF COURSE IT WOULD

Shawn Glasco -- a "researcher" who's done work for Jack Cashill (you know, the lunatic who thinks Bill Ayers wrote Barack Obama's book Dreams from My Father) -- now takes to the e-pages of the American Thinker to explain that mainstream accounts of the marriage of Barack Obama's parents add up to a conspiracy so vast:

Barack Obama's parents were "married in name only," according to David Maraniss's 2012 Barack Obama: The Story. But since definitions of an "in name only" marriage vary, such as "a marriage of convenience" or "a sexless marriage," and Maraniss failed to explain his claim, it is unclear what he was implying. Therefore, Obama's oft-told nativity story must be searched for the full implications of Obama's parents' "in name only" marriage.

Yes -- it absolutely must, because ... well, it's not clear why. Because there are "implications." Whatever those might be.

It seems we have to start at the beginning, when Ann Dunham and Barack Obama Sr. met -- or "met":

According to Dreams from My Father, the official Obama nativity story began in the fall of 1960, when Ann Dunham met Obama Sr. "in a Russian language course" at the University of Hawaii (UH). Yet Ann's full UH transcript hasn't been released, and Obama Sr.'s UH transcript mysteriously went "missing" shortly after being viewed by Obama Sr. biographer Sally Jacobs. So it will never be known if, in fact, Ann and Obama Sr. were in the same Russian class, as Dreams claims.

Russian Language Class-Gate!

And then we get to Conception-Gate:

... Maraniss "calculated" in his 2012 book that Ann and Obama Sr. "were having sex, most likely at his apartment on 10th Avenue in Kaimuki[,]" "within weeks of the first day" of the "Russia" class. Although not at "10th Avenue" as Maraniss claimed, the 1960-1961 Honolulu Polk directory does show Obama Sr. residing(r) at 625 11th Ave.





... But Ann's daughter, Maya Soetoro, postulated "with a chuckle" in David Mendell's 2007 Obama biography From Promise to Power that her hapa-Kenyan brother "was conceived" in a "nondescript concrete dormitory building just inside the campus" in which Obama Sr. "had been living" "while he and Ann dated." Since, in reality, Obama Sr.'s apparent 11th Avenue address in the fall of 1960 was not a dormitory "just inside the campus," but rather a house over 1.5 miles from campus, we have to ask if Maya was confused, purposefully deceitful, or a combination of both.

Omigod! What the Indonesia-born Maya Soetoro "postulated" about the exact location where Barack Obama was conceived might not have been correct! She must have been engaging in a deliberate act of deception! Why wouldn't she be able to provide an accurate account of a sex act she didn't witness, which led to the birth of her half-brother nine years before she was born, in a completely different country?

From there, we move on to smoking guns like these:

Notably, Obama Sr.'s 11th Avenue address listed in the 1960-1961 and 1961-1962 Honolulu Polk directories doesn't appear in any of Obama Sr.'s INS files, which listed four Honolulu addresses: 1810 University Ave., 2036 Round Top Terrace, 1704 Punahou St., and 1482 Alencastre St. Therefore, the authenticity of Obama Sr.'s INS files ... needs to be questioned.

Right, because real government files never contain inaccurate or incomplete information, especially when the subject is the address of an immigrant. The otherwise 100% accuracy rate of immigration records proves that Obama Sr.'s INS records are fake!

I'll spare you the rest of the speculation bout the exact date of the Obamas' marriage (if there ever was one!) and the exact dates when they lived together (or did they?), and just ask: what the hell difference does this make? Yes, it would be nice to have an accurate narrative of he relationship between Ann Dunham and Barack Obama Sr. for the historical record, but, really, we know what we need to know as Americans, don't we? Our current president is the son of a couple who did not remain a couple very long, and the president nonetheless thrived thanks to the love of his mother and his mother's parents, while remaining acutely aware of his father's absence. What else would constitute critical information? What does parsing half-century-old address records tell us? If Barack Obama Sr. didn't live at 625 11th Avenue, is that a constitutional violation on the part of the current Barack Obama? Does it make him a better or worse president? What's the point?

I guess the point is that it gives the nutjobs -- the "researchers" and their readers -- some busywork to engage in so they're not doing real harm in some other way. So I suppose we should just let them do this and tiptoe quietly away.