Camille Paglia's a Birther??

Every now and then I wander through World Net Daily (aka "crazie central") to see what the fringe of the fringe has to say. There's the usual blather about predatory Muslims and ACORN and every now and then there's something birther this way comes.

Stumbled across WND's list of prominent birthers this morning. Here's the list:

Leaders on a growing list also are asking question, including Tennessee gubernatorial candidate Ron Ramsey, Hawaii state Sen. Will Espero, U.S. Rep. Nathan Deal, R-Ga., former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, former House majority leader Tom DeLay, U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., U.S. Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., feminist icon Camille Paglia, New Hampshire State Rep. Laurence Rappaport, former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, R-Ariz., and prominent commentators Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Mark Levin, Lou Dobbs, Peter Boyles and WND's Chuck Norris and Pat Boone.

Usual suspects at first glance then I went:

Huh? Camille Paglia's a birther?

This I had to see. Here's Camille from November of '08:

In the closing weeks of the election, however, I became increasingly disturbed by the mainstream media's avoidance of forthright dealing with several controversies that had been dogging Obama -- even as every flimsy rumor about Sarah Palin was being trumpeted as if it were engraved in stone on Mount Sinai. For example, I had thought for many months that the flap over Obama's birth certificate was a tempest in a teapot. But simple questions about the certificate were never resolved to my satisfaction. Thanks to their own blathering, fanatical overkill, of course, the right-wing challenges to the birth certificate never gained traction.

But Obama could have ended the entire matter months ago by publicly requesting Hawaii to issue a fresh, long-form, stamped certificate and inviting a few high-profile reporters in to examine the document and photograph it. (The campaign did make the "short-form" certificate available to Factcheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.)

Curious part is that had she actually read the Factcheck posting she linked to, she would have read:

In June, the Obama campaign released a digitally scanned image of his birth certificate to quell speculative charges that he might not be a natural-born citizen. But the image prompted more blog-based skepticism about the document's authenticity. And recently, author Jerome Corsi, whose book attacks Obama, said in a TV interview that the birth certificate the campaign has is "fake."

We beg to differ. FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate. We conclude that it meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship. Claims that the document lacks a raised seal or a signature are false. We have posted high-resolution photographs of the document as "supporting documents" to this article. Our conclusion: Obama was born in the U.S.A. just as he has always said.

Not only that, but they have an update, dated November 1 - 11 days before Camille's Salon posting. It reads:

Update, Nov. 1: The director of Hawaii’s Department of Health confirmed Oct. 31 that Obama was born in Honolulu.

Here's Camille a few months later in April '09:

Yes, there were ambiguities about Obama's birth certificate that have never been satisfactorily resolved.

So the official position of the State of Hawaii isn't good enough?

And then last September where she's quoted as saying this on NPR:

First of all, I reject the idea that the “birther” campaign is motivated by racism. There may be racism among it, but there are legitimate questions about the documentation of Obama’s birth certificate.

I used to be a fan of Camille's. Didn't always agree with her but I always thought there was a huge brain behind that mile-a-minute voice.

Now I know she's just nuts.