Bill Maher: 'Birthers' must be stopped

By GottaLaff

Bill Maher has a piece in today's L.A. Times. These Friday commentaries are the cleaned-up versions of the end-of-show rants he does on Real Time. If you watch him tonight, see how this written version compares to his on-air one. Excerpts:

For the last couple of weeks, we've all been laughing heartily at the wacky antics of the "birthers" -- the far-right goofballs who claim Barack Obama wasn't really born in Hawaii and therefore the job of president goes to the runner-up, former Miss California Carrie Prejean. [...]

And there's nothing anyone can do to convince these folks. You could hand them, in person, the original birth certificate and have a video of Obama emerging from the womb with Don Ho singing in the background ... and they still wouldn't believe it.

Which raises the question: Why, in this country, is it always the religious right that won't take anything on faith? [...]

This flap might be a deluded right-wing obsession that is a total waste of time, but so was Whitewater, and look where that ended up. [...]

And once these stories get out there, they're hard to stamp out because our media do such a lousy job of speaking truth to stupid. [...]

Clinton got impeached and Kerry got destroyed in large part because the media didn't have the guts to say, "This is nonsense."

Lou Dobbs has been saying recently that people are asking a lot of questions about the birth certificate. Yes, the same people who want to know where the sun goes at night.

And Lou, you're their new king.

That's why it's so important that we the few, the proud, the reality-based attack this stuff before it has a chance to fester and spread. This isn't a case of Democrats versus Republicans. It's sentient beings versus the lizard people, and it is to them I offer this deal: I'll show you Obama's birth certificate when you show me Sarah Palin's high school diploma.

I edited out a lot of the funny parts. Please go read the rest here.