What the hell happened to the levers?

Donald Trump, he of Undaunted Idiocy, tries to birther the waters with Wolf Blitzer on CNN. To his credit, Blitzer will have none of it. On the other hand, why did Blitzer give the blowhard a platform from which to spew his nastiness?

I didn’t want to write about Donald Trump anymore, but he is making me do it.

Today, President Obama published on the White House website a long-form version of his birth certificate. This “certificate” is a longer, more complete document than the “certification” that his campaign released in 2008, which is what a citizen of Hawaii typically receives when he requests documents of birth. The publication of this document should stop all discussions of Obama’s citizenship once and for all.

Moments after the president released the document, Trump took credit for its release. Saying that he was “very proud of being able to accomplish something no one else was able to accomplish”, Trump said, “I’m taking great credit and you have to ask the president, ‘why didn’t he do this a long time ago? Why didn’t he do it a long time ago?’ When Hillary Clinton was asking, when everybody was asking, why didn’t he do it? It’s shocking. It’s shocking.”

Now, just for the record, on April 15th, in this blog, I said “[Trump] will retract this birther nonsense, Basically, he won’t want to be scraping this shit off the bottom of his shoe for the rest of his life, so he will claim to have made an open-minded investigation of the birther claims, and will proudly put his imprimatur on Obama’s citizenship. He will move from skeptic to validator.” I think that was pretty close.

Now Trump has upped the ante, and has begun to question Obama’s qualifications for being admitted to Columbia University. “I heard he was a terrible student,” he said, in part, rolling the point back and forth. “How does a bad student get into Columbia University and then Harvard Law?” He is now demanding that Obama release his transcripts.

The insinuation is clear: Obama was undeservedly admitted into Columbia because he is black. Trump may deny that this is his implication, but he cannot run from it.

Trump has had a glorious spring, proving to NBC that he is a world-caliber publicity machine who can manipulate the world’s media merely by whispering the word “candidacy.” On that basis, he has increased the viewership and rating for his cheesy TV show, and more deeply ingratiated himself into NBC’s plans. No doubt he has also increased the value of his name, which, by attaching it to condos and golf courses, is the source of much of his wealth. But Trump is now one small step away from destroying all that. Whether Obama had poor grades before he was admitted into Columbia or not is entirely immaterial; he has proven his legitimacy, indeed, to the point that his success now would legitimate whatever affirmative action program nurtured him. We are not talking about an academic underachiever who got a sheepskin from Basketball State on the strength of his jump shot. We are talking about a man who got himself elected president of the United States.

This is a thinly disguised shout of “Nigger;” perhaps not even disguised at all.

We are one short step away from the moment when America recoils in disgust from these despicable tactics.

We await only the moment when Joseph Welch turns to Senator McCarthy and says “You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

On Day Two I was immersed in Williamsburg, and I continued to have a great time. In the morning, we attended a performance by some of Williamsburg’s historic character interpreters, most of whom were playing slaves in the Colonial Era. The scenarios did an excellent job bringing to life the conflicts and pressures experienced by people of color in those terrible circumstances. The actors who play these characters do an impressive job; not only do they have “play” characters, and their words, deeds, and feelings, but they have “inhabit” the characters, a kind of performance that requires considerable study of the personalities and the era, along with the nimbleness to extemporize when spoken to by visitors. A Q&A session followed the performance, and it was striking to hear the actors speak of the particular challenges posed by having to play a slave all day.

At a luncheon in the afternoon, we heard a talk by Professor Alan Brinkley of Columbia University on the question How Do Presidents Succeed-and Fail? Brinkley focused on the differences between Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I guess Brinkley picked a topic suitable for Presidents’ Day weekend, but I would have preferred to have heard an address closer to the theme of the weekend. I am happy to say, however, that I met some wonderful people at lunch, including four school teachers from Salt Lake City who are crazy about Williamsburg (three of them had visited at least three times.) They love the atmosphere and they love history (I’m with them.) I also very lucky to have as a seat mate Christy Coleman, who is president of American Civil War Museum, which is located at the historic Tredegar Foundry in Richmond. I had never heard of this place (if I had, I probably would have checked it out instead of the Museum of the Confederacy), which uses historic interpreters and exhibitions to tell the story of the Civil War from Union, Confederate and African American perspectives. I really enjoyed talking to Ms. Coleman, who began her career as a historic interpreter at WIlliamsburg; I would have liked to have heard more about her exciting work.

After lunch, I had the opportunity to sit down and chat with Colin Campbell, the president and CEO of Colonial Williamsburg, who spoke about the organization’s efforts to bring history to life and to reveal the issues and conflicts that make studying it so exciting. “You can’t just have a guide take a group of tourists into a historic building and point out the wall paper anymore,” he said. “Those days are gone forever. We try to present stories here–stories that full of drama, and that are challenging, and that have the incomparable benefit of being real.” One can certainly appreciate the hard work and sheer intelligence that it takes to design programs that reach people of all ages and widely different interest levels, and that also take on topics that are sensitive, if not outright caustic. “Do I get mail?” Mr. Campbell chuckled. “Yes, but the content is not negotiable. We present what in our judgment is good history, not politically correct history.”

The evening concluded with a very entertaining musical performance by an impressively accomplished and very witty trio that calls themselves The Virginia Company. Their program, called “To Washington’s Health,” consisted of drinking songs, dances, reels, ballads and other tunes that would have been known to the Father of Our Country (who apparently was not only first in peace and war, but often first onto the dance floor.) Dinner took place at an excellent restaurant called The Blue Talon, where I was once again able to thank Samantha Lacher and Erin Curtis of the Missy Farren & Associates Public Relations Agency, who helped arrange my activities. I enjoyed meeting them, and am very grateful for all their congenial assistance.