The 2012 presidential election is over a year away, but that is not stopping the press from already trying to weed out the competition. The unconfirmed competition, that is. Let’s take Donald Trump, for example, who is just one person on the long list of potential Republican candidates.
Trump has yet to launch a presidential exploratory committee or make an official announcement, declaring his intent to run, but said on multiple occasions that he is considering it. I would say, he is more than considering it. Rather, he is already putting himself in prime position to campaign.
The business mogul has made numerous TV appearances in recent days, where he often makes stout demands for Obama to present his birth certificate to the public. This fervent fixation Trump has on the validity of Obama’s citizenship has officially lumped him in the “birther” category.
A birther is defined by Urban Dictionary as “a conspiracy theorist who believes that Barack Obama is ineligible for the Presidency of the United States, based on any number of claims related to his place of birth, birth certificate, favorite birthday, or whether or not he has heard the song Africa by Toto.”
Obviously, this is a degrading term, so is it okay for an American press to label someone a birther? (I smell something resembling libel. Sniff. Sniff).
A recent Politico article, used their headline “Joe Biden's daughter trashes birther Donald Trump,” to label this possible presidential hopeful a conspiracy theorist, based on the definition provided by Urban Dictionary. I can't think of any occasion in which “conspiracy theorist” was delineated in a positive sense. All I'm saying is, they should have at least put the term, birther, in quotes.
This is not the only problem I have with the article, which just relayed the tweets posted by Ashley Biden, the Vice President’s daughter, expressing her ill feelings toward Trump. This art
Like I said, the writer only discusses Bidens daughter’s tweet, but does not consult with anyone from Trumps’s side for a reaction. This is necessary in an American-style publication. The writer does try to contact the White House, for their reaction, but what good does this do the maligned Trump?
Second, the article asserts that the Obama theory has been debunked. But, when you click on the hyperlink that the website provides, you get this--no proof. Just another potential candidate (Mike Huckabee) saying the “birthers” need to give the birther theory a rest. The article says:
Trump's play into the debunked theory that Obama wasn't born in America, along with his more recent claims that he has investigators on the ground in Hawaii poking around, have propelled the "birther" debate into the mainstream media in a way like never before.
All in all, this article should never have been written. And, that’s a strong statement coming from someone who is not a fan of Trump, myself.
Besides the fact that the headline was pushing slander and the article was extremely one-sided, this article could not even be constituted as news. The Vice President’s twenty-something year old daughter tweeted something not-so-nice about a possible candidate from not-her-father's political party. So what? Maybe this would have been a little more newsworthy if the tweet came from one of Obama's underaged kids.
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