Sunday, March 14, 2010

Ed Martin won't correct birther, so Adam Sharp had to do it for him

Ed Martin held a Health Care Townhall last week. At the event, which you can see here, one tea party member had the following to say (starting at about the 55:40 mark of the video):
I wanna do a commercial for a friend of mine. Does anybody know who Joseph Farah is? He is what? He's an author, he's also an editor of World Net News. This gentleman spoke at the Tea Party convention in Nashville... It's about a 40 minute spiel: he talks about God, he talks about birth certificates, he talks about what the real motive is that this government has. It's to take us over. Period. One step at a time, and he's already got his foot in there...we knew all this before this man got elected, but we didn't want to believe it. There was more books out on what a rascal was running for the Presidency then I've read in my lifetime: and I've read em all...If you really want to know the facts, read some of the literature on this guy. He ain't been a nice guy for a long time, and he ain't gettin any better.
The speech by Joseph Farah he was referring to was this one.
Ed Martin did nothing to correct the man's birther conspiracy theorizing, instead mentioning that he liked the suggestion about precinct captains.

But the conspirational claims were so extreme that even Riverfront Times Ass Clown of the Week Adam Sharp felt a need to come up to the podium to correct the misinformation (1:07 mark):
I wasn't going to say anything, but then the gentleman mentioned something. I know most of the people in this room, it's pretty obvious, don't like Obama, and I don't either, but unfortunately he was born in this country. I've done the research, ok.
Aside from the shocking fact that Adam Sharp actually made a positive contribution to public discourse, it's also shocking that he had to. Shouldn't Martin, as a public figure, correct people at his townhall when they refer to absurd conspiracy theories? If Sharp hadn't gotten up at the end of the meeting, no one would have corrected the original allegation, which got quite a bit of clapping from the audience. Martin appears to be willing to passively allow extremist right-wing conspiracy theories go unchecked if it increases his chances of getting votes.

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