With apologies to Three Dog Night (Mama told me not to come).
I read the paper every day and especially like the Atlanta paper's Q&A On the News. A lot of times, the Q&A's (or actually the Q's) can be answered by a quick look at the Internet, so I often ask myself: why didn't the writer/questioner just query the Internet? But, just like I enjoy reading and holding the actual newspaper every morning, I therefore in some way suspend the fact that the Internet is fully available for updates, breaking stories, sports scores, analysis, and entertainment.
Who knows? Not everyone has Internet and some of these questioners really and truly want their paper to answer questions for them (all two or three of them).
This morning, a question came across that I had never pondered or heard about. It asked, paraphrasing, "Why did President Obama and his wife 'surrender' their law licenses?" Seems an innocuous question, but understand - we live in a very red state. We all know what a right-wing agenda is. They don't hide it very well. You know, Obama is a Muslim, he's a communist, or socialist, or a Kenyan. WTF? But the questioner, I believed when reading it, showed a bias for conspiracy theories, or something. The law licenses were surrendered and his implication was...what? They had committed a crime? The Illinois state bar then asked Candidtate Obama, and his wife before him, to surrender their law license?
Basically, the answer was about as mundane as they come. And it's all here to read.
The president and Michelle put their law licenses on hold or suspension to: (1) not have to pay dues and (2) not have to engage in "continuing education." The Illinois official said basically, "it's not an unusal thing."
For a moment, I gave the questioner (some guy from Atlanta) the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he just wanted to clear something up as a neutral observer. Well, not so fast. This guy has written letters to the paper before. In this one, he speaks out against President Obama's desire to give tax breaks to the middle class, etc., etc (letter is last one in link titled "Economy"):
Our president commiserates with our unemployed and with the middle class...Now ask yourself: Who is it who creates jobs? Is it the middle class? Or is it the upper class — them that have the bucks?
You get the idea. We've all heard this crap before. "Only the rich create jobs." Right. There was a letter opposing this idea four days later that said the middle class spends the most with their tax cuts and this spending actually does create jobs. Right!
But, as the election draws near, these ass holes will come out of the woodwork to spread all kinds of BS about President Obama. The BS this question about law licenses comes from is a bona fide Urban Legend. Snopes.com debunked it a few years back.
As an example, something called chasvoice.blogspot.com has the "story":
President Barack Obama, former editor of the Harvard Law Review, is no longer a "lawyer". He surrendered his license back in 2008 in order to escape charges he lied on his bar application.
I know, I know. Consider the source. But these wingnut ideas have gone mainstream, if you want to call Donald Trump's birther idea mainstream. IT'S OUT THERE. No longer under a rock. They even make their way into a mainstream newspaper. But the more one debunks, the harder the other side digs in, or speaks louder, or carries a shotgun, or wants to put the white back in the White House, or storms election officials re-counting ballots and threatens bodily harm, or tears up voter registrations (only Democratic ones)...or wants to take a swing at the President to honor his damn father.
My only consolation is - I think these idiots are on the way out, as in the way of the Dodo bird, dying out and going extinct. Even in the South (eventually).