Monday Open Thread

Welcome to your Monday open thread. I think we are getting a summer preview today! Enjoy it while it lasts.

Sadly we live in a world where it’s necessary for the former Director of Health of Hawai’i (appointed by Republican Governor Lingle) to do yet another interview to confirm for the 1000th time that yes, Obama was born in Hawai’i.

The first is that the original so-called “long form” birth certificate — described by Hawaiian officials as a “record of live birth” — absolutely exists, located in a bound volume in a file cabinet on the first floor of the state Department of Health. Fukimo said she has personally inspected it — twice. The first time was in late October 2008, during the closing days of the presidential campaign, when the communications director for the state’s then Republican governor, Linda Lingle (who appointed Fukino) asked if she could make a public statement in response to claims then circulating on the Internet that Obama was actually born in Kenya.

Before she would do so, Fukino said, she wanted to inspect the files — and did so, taking with her the state official in charge of vital records. She found the original birth record, properly numbered, half typed and half handwritten, and signed by the doctor who delivered Obama, located in the files. She then put out a public statement asserting to the document’s validity. She later put out another public statement in July 2009 — after reviewing the original birth record a second time.

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Her second point — one she made repeatedly in the interview — is that the shorter, computer generated “certification of live birth” that was obtained by the Obama campaign in 2007 and has since been publicly released is the standard document that anybody requesting their birth certificate from the state of Hawaii would receive from the health department.

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But Wisch, the spokesman for the attorney general’s office, said state law does not in fact permit the release of “vital records,” including an original “record of live birth” — even to the individual whose birth it records.

“It’s a Department of Health record and it can’t be released to anybody,” he said. Nor do state laws have any provision that authorizes such records to be photocopied, Wisch said. If Obama wanted to personally visit the state health department, he would be permitted to inspect his birth record, Wisch said.

This fits with what I know. My birth certificate is just like Obama’s and it’s the one that’s issued by the state I was born in. I had never even heard of a “long form” birth certificate until this nonsense came up. I assume I have one in the vital records, I don’t really know. The yahoos who think that requiring a long form birth certificate will keep Obama off the ballot are wrong – Hawai’i will pass a law allowing Obama to get his long form birth certificate if it’s needed. Not that it will stop the conspiratists, since they are motivated by something other than concerns about Obama’s birth place.

Yesterday, this 2-year-old op-ed by George Will was rocketing around the Twittersphere. I don’t know what Will did, something showing how out-of-touch he is and it brought his column about his hatred of denim to mind.

Long ago, when James Dean and Marlon Brando wore it, denim was, Akst says, “a symbol of youthful defiance.” Today, Silicon Valley billionaires are rebels without causes beyond poses, wearing jeans when introducing new products. Akst’s summa contra denim is grand as far as it goes, but it only scratches the surface of this blight on Americans’ surfaces. Denim is the infantile uniform of a nation in which entertainment frequently features childlike adults (“Seinfeld,” “Two and a Half Men”) and cartoons for adults (“King of the Hill”). Seventy-five percent of American “gamers” — people who play video games — are older than 18 and nevertheless are allowed to vote. In their undifferentiated dress, children and their childish parents become undifferentiated audiences for juvenilized movies (the six — so far — “Batman” adventures and “Indiana Jones and the Credit-Default Swaps,” coming soon to a cineplex near you). Denim is the clerical vestment for the priesthood of all believers in democracy’s catechism of leveling — thou shalt not dress better than society’s most slovenly. To do so would be to commit the sin of lookism — of believing that appearance matters. That heresy leads to denying the universal appropriateness of everything, and then to the elitist assertion that there is good and bad taste.

Denim is the carefully calculated costume of people eager to communicate indifference to appearances. But the appearances that people choose to present in public are cues from which we make inferences about their maturity and respect for those to whom they are presenting themselves.

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(A confession: The author owns one pair of jeans. Wore them once. Had to. Such was the dress code for former senator Jack Danforth’s 70th birthday party, where Jerry Jeff Walker sang his classic “Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother.” Music for a jeans-wearing crowd.)

He wore blue jeans once! The shame!