Conservative circles are buzzing at the release of a new home video that was taken by Barack Obama’s father during his actual birth. Although old and grainy, the video clearly shows a white woman giving birth to a baby, with Obama’s mother’s name (Ann Dunham) on her chart, her photo, a calendar open to the month of August 1961, and a flag of Kenya. This proves beyond any reasonable doubt that Obama was born in Kenya.
Or does it? Crooks and Liars lists all the signs that show that this is a fake.
In addition I would add a new one, that this business of fathers even being in the delivery room, let alone filming the process, is a relatively new phenomenon that originated in the west. At least in Sri Lanka, a father was not allowed in the delivery room unless he was also a physician, and this was the case even into the 1980s when my daughter was born. I suspect that the same would be true in Kenya.
But you can be sure that this video will spread like wildfire amongst the birthers as the final definitive proof of the greatest conspiracy of our time, to install an ineligible Kenyan Muslim Communist as president.
This stuff never gets old.
…a father was not allowed in the delivery room….
Surely they would have made an exception for the father of the future President of the United States?
The birthers’ objection to Obama is not that he was supposedly born in Kenya but he was born Black.
I would’ve snorted with derision if that were a birth scene in a movie or TV show -- for a purported newborn that kid’s huge! I laughed out loud at them holding the “umbilical cord” on with their finger, too.
Of course, but they can’t openly say that, can they?
If I was filming the birth of my son in, say, Germany to a German woman… there’s a good chance there’d be an American flag somewhere in the room. Barack Sr wanting a Kenyan flag for a Hawaii birth does not seem at all surprising to me.
So even if the video is authentic… how does this prove he was born in Kenya?
I think you are giving them too much credit. These people have the subtlety of a sledgehammer. They wanted to somehow show that the birth took place in Kenya. What could they put as a symbol of Kenya? A flag, of course! I’m surprised that they didn’t also have chorus in the room singing the Kenyan national anthem, just to drive the point home.
After delivering that giant neonate, Ann looks relaxed and not at all exhausted or sweaty 🙂
And prior to that it looks like she’s doing some sort of focused breathing a la Lamaze…I don’t think that was being done much in 1961.
But it must be true. After all, the proud Daddy luckily accidentally got the medical chart into the frame!
Conservatives probably think this is real too:
http://www.disclose.tv/action/viewvideo/473/Roswell_Alien_autopsy/
…the infamous Roswell “alien autopsy” video, which is at least as believable as this “Obama’s birth” video.
I am reminded of the wonderfully cheesy TV series Sunset Beach. One of the story arcs had some characters going to London and being interviewed by the police.
The Scene in the Police station had a flag pole in the corner of the room, with a Union Jack on it!
No British Police station has ever done this, but the makers of the TV show just blithely assumed that what Americans did, everyone else would do too.
(Don’t even ask about the “British” cops wearing shoulder holsters…)
I burst out laughing when I saw a clean, ~6 month-old infant sliding out from under the clean white sheets.
Also, that flag didn’t become the flag of Kenya until 1963.
They didn’t have home video cameras then
and thats not a newborn
I was going to say that too. Way too big for a newborn. Also not slimy enough. Plus the baby is looking at stuff and focusing his eyes. Newborns can’t do that.
Someone please restore my faith in humanity and tell me this video is tongue-in-cheek. Pretty please…
The baby has teeth already. It’s a miracle!
Also, look at that cool stethoscope, with white plastic ear plug tips. I don’t remember those from the 1960s.
I just realized, looking at the date, that Obama is only a few months older than my first son. No fathers in birthing rooms at that time. No cameras, either. No handing newborns to the mother until all the clean-up had been done.
Clean sheets! So funny!
And the baby was first hung upside down, holding him by his heels until his air passages were cleared and he gave his first cry. Maybe (probably) they still are. No doctor ever picked a neonate up by his chest at that stage.
And the umbilical cord was cut and tied, either in a self knot, or with a string. Then a few inches of cord were left on the umbilicus and bound or bandaged with gauze. It dried up on its own over a week or so, then fell off. It would never be cut at the belly button proper, to avoid hemorrhage.
Yep. His albedo deficiency is what really grinds their gears.
I’m astonished they didn’t have Rafiki the monkey holding baby “Obama” above his head, to the strains of a background chorus singing The Circle of Life.
That would have been super subtle.
Ha! That would have been good.
As a Brit, I’m always chuffed when US tv shows do that. It’s cute.
One of my absolute favourite tropes is the idea that everyone in the UK either speaks like Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins, or the Queen (she’s the main character played by Helen Mirren in that film of hers).
It’s a hilariously bad fake, from the enormous six-month-old standing in for a neonate to the medical chart in which every day is August 4.
But I think this is making more ripples on non-Conservative sites (where posters like to point at it and laugh) than with actual Conservatives. A visit to the notoriously gullible right wing WND shows no obvious references to it; the Free Republic site doesn’t seem to have any stories about it either.
All those pointing out inconsistencies like the spotless sheets, bizarrely relaxed woman in labour, unusually developed neonate and anachronistic technology are missing the point. You see, this is all further proof that Obama is the Antichrist and had reality-distorting powers even on the day of his birth.
LOL. ROTFL.
You mean the Brits don’t have a flag fetish?
It’s purported to be on Super 8, not video. Of course, Super 8 wasn’t introduced until 1965. Also, that was shot on video, not film. The graininess and marks that look like film are actually plug-ins for iMovie. Not only is this fake, it’s a very bad fake. The least they could have done is shot it on actual 8 mm film.
The English do, but only when our national football team is still in the World/European Cup. They very quickly disappear from windows and cars when we inevitably lose on penalties in the quarter final.
Wales is probably the flag-happiest country in the UK the rest of the time, but when they have a huge badass dragon on it, can you blame them? 🙂
“Home video” in 1961? Do you really think a hospital would let a guy in with one of the humongous cameras that they needed back then? Of course if it was shot on Super-8 (which would be more likely for a home movie) there’d be the negative and the manufacturing date/batch-id on the film. It’s getting to the point where faking a negative would be very difficult simply because of availability of the materials. Notice the color registration in the sample above? It’s intended to give the appearance of aged chromogenic film -- if it was video that wouldn’t happen and, more to the point, why didn’t the people who digitized it color-correct it? Oh, right, they didn’t color correct it because it’s fake and having it color-shifted just screams “old” doesn’t it?
I’m betting they’re going to say Leni Reifenstahl shot it, too. I’m surprised they don’t have the baby wrapped in a hammer-and-sickle blanket.
Maybe it’s a piece of sabotage provocation -- done to give the right wingnuts a chance to make bigger fools of themselves.
They couldn’t find an authentic 1961 Kenyan newspaper to walk by with too? No imagination, these types.
I just loved the bizarre finger fluttering over the lens to give the appearance of jumpy film. Coulda done that in post, but no, better for the white guy behind the camera to do it with his finger.
Hey, if they can go back in time to plant a birth announcement in a Hawaiian newspaper, they can go back in time to drop off a little Kenyan flag sticker!
Once you’ve conceded that your opponents are using magic to achieve their goals, nothing is impossible!
That is definitely the largest and most alert new born I’ve ever seen.