PrintMarch 8, 2011
George Will's Atrophied Intellectual Curiosity
For all his contributions to the cause, and they have been many, conservative media personality George Will may well have exhausted his shelf life.
In his much-discussed Sunday column, Will all too predictably excoriated those Republicans politicians and pundits who have questioned Obama's origins and ideology.
Most troubling was Will's slam of WOR Radio host Steve Malzberg for asking would-be presidential candidate Mike Huckabee a question that strikes those of us who have done some investigating as altogether reasonable:
Asked Malzberg, "Don't you think it's fair also to ask [Barack Obama] . . . how come we don't have a health record, we don't have a college record, we don't have a birth certificate . . . . Don't you think we deserve to know more about this man?"
According to Will, Huckabee should have answered, "I've seen paranoia, goodbye." Why paranoia, George? Why is it unreasonable for a media person to ask basic questions for which we still have no answers?
If people in Will's position had asked these questions in 2008, Barack Obama would not be president today. But they did not. They have continued to operate under the mid-twentieth century William Buckley model of a conservative commentator: be wise, be droll, and stick to the news the other guys put on the table lest someone think you kooky.
Buckley, however, operated before the Internet. He had little choice but to comment on the other guy's news. So did Will in the early years of his career, but now he has no such excuse. The information is out there for those who look. Will does not have to rely on what the Post tells him
As I show in my new book, Deconstructing Obama, the Post's award-winning reporter David Maraniss wrote a lengthy biographical piece on the next president two months before the election and made a hash of it. Among other things, he missed the fact that Obama and mother, Ann Dunham, spent the first year of Obama's life in Washington State without Barack Obama Sr.
The little Obama family, the one that Obama boasted about in his two convention speeches, never was. Barack Obama ascended to the presidency on a profoundly and provably false origins story, but Will would have us stick with the counterfeit story because it has the Post's imprimatur.
Like too many conservatives in Washington, Will has chosen not to know any more than the Post tells him. That is bad enough. But when he scolds those who chosen to know more, he makes me remember why I can no longer bring myself to watch Sunday morning TV.
Jack's Book-TV presentation on Deconstructing Obama will air on C-SPAN II this Saturday evening at 7 PM EST and Sunday morning at 10 AM.
