i, for one, don't mind the recent media mania about the "birther movement." it just reinforces the double-bind the republican party is in. the party has been whittled down to a stump of true believers, many of which are truly crazy. the party needs to sweep them under the rug if they want to reclaim a majority with the general electorate. but they can't because, while the birthers are a small percentage of the overall population, they're a big percentage of republican primary voters. which means that anyone who challenges them from within the party (like mike castle) risks paying a price from the rank-and-file in their party. but anyone who doesn't risks looking like a lunatic to the rest of the country.
which is why the media attention is actually good. birtherism is one of those ideologies that seems to look incredibly convincing from the inside and batshit crazy from the outside. which means that whenever these stories run, it may get 10% of the audience nodding their heads, but the other 90% are thinking "holy shit, i may not like president obama, but those folks are off their fucking rocker." in terms of political effect, this attention can only screw over the already pretty screwed republicans.
plus, birthers are fun to make fun of. i mean, the punchline to all of this is that even if obama were born in a different country, he'd still be eligible to be president because his mother was a u.s. citizen. even if they were right, they'd be wrong.
