Tim and I definitely know better than to bring up political issues, or religious ones, in public places or mixed company. (Okay, I know a little better than Tim.) But, in any case, we know where our relatives and friends all stand on political issues so we are totally fine agreeing to disagree. Thank goodness I'm learning something as I get older!!!
I did, however, feel compelled to set the record straight when Alec recently came home from a mini-vacation worried that President Obama may not be a true citizen of the United States, thus making it impossible to be president. This is the guy Alec's parents voted for. This is the guy who's inauguration Alec's classroom watched on television as a proud moment in Black-Amercan history. This is the guy who's praises we've sung for many months, and now he may not qualify to be president??? Huh? The claim is that Obama is not a natural-born citizen -- either because he was actually born in Kenya -- or because Hawaii was not yet our 50th state at the time Obama was born there. Alec was concerned that "they" even won't show his birth certificate. I'm not sure who "they" is, but "they" sound intelligent and confident that they know what they're doing. Alec was told these things by people he sees as smart, loving, fair, giving and fun.
On a whole different subject -- I love SNOPES. They are the greatest website that you can turn to to give finite answers on internet controversies. Remember all those super-dramatic forwarded pictures of the shark jumping out of the ocean to eat a guy climbing up a helicopter rope. Or how about the picture of a vulture sitting right behind a starving child in Africa seemingly waiting for the kid to die. So profound! Or just crap!!! Snopes is a website that takes all the too-amazing-to-be-true forwards running rampant throughout the world wide web and gives the actual truth behind it. Snopes will even tell you where the forward originated and how it became the "truth" today. I would love to work there because I love to shed light on things and discover how myths actually come about. I guess it's the detective side of me.
So you can see where this is going........After listening very carefully to what Alec had to say about the president, someone that just a few weeks ago, he looked up to as a role model of a man in the public eye, a loving husband in the public eye, an endearing father in the public eye, the leader of the most powerful nation on the planet........ I just quietly turned to my laptop and "snopesed" the internet claim. I did not even know what Snopes would have uncovered in this issue. Perhaps it was all true. But I don't need Snopes to tell me something that my commonsense gut already knew. I knew the guy would not have even come close to the primaries without top officials seeing citizenship documentation. I mean... c'mon people, wise up! Have our nation's top conservatives truly sunk to the level of Amy Hallsey, an aspiring cheerleader in my 10th grade class who didn't quite make the cut at Pep Squad tryouts? Having been spurned and feeling the attention surrounding her at all times slowly fading away, she cooked up a story about a Pep Squad member so heinous and socially destructive,.... Well, let's just say if the girl could have simply pulled out a birth certificate proving citizenship to erase her hellish problems, she would've done it with the speed of today's teen texting addicts. Instead, she hung her head in shame for THREE solid years and after graduation? Who knows . . . Bag lady? Meth muncher? We may never know!
So I give you Snopes' version of the events at hand.......
And remember, Albert Einstein said "Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."
I hear laughter.
