Five years

It was in December 2008 when this post-presidential-election blog started with the intent of being a repository for the debunking of some fringe claims about Barack Obama left over from the election campaign.

Birther argument had taken over my personal blog¹ and I wanted to move it elsewhere. The idea for a new blog with the name Obama Conspiracy Theories came to me while driving down the interstate highway and I was very happy to find that the domain, obamaconspiracy.org, was available (the .com was taken) and I snatched it up—that was December 11, 2008.

In the beginning I posted under the default WordPress user name, “admin,” but that seemed so “generic” that I cast about for some nom de Internet as a substitute and came up with “Dr. Conspiracy,” inspired by Dr. Science of the Ducks Breath Mystery Theater, who always gave the disclaimer: “I’m not a real doctor, but I have a Master’s Degree… in science!”

Because the 2008 election was already over, I didn’t think that the blog would be very active, definitely behind the curve. I felt that the birthers would pack up and go home once Obama was officially inaugurated as our 44th President. That didn’t work out. I also thought that the birthers would pack it up when Obama was re-elected in 2012. Fool me twice….

I also didn’t foresee that an online community with over 1,000 visitors a day would evolve, and that I would be blessed with some wonderful comedy moments and some profound insights from commenters. Clearly the comments are a major feature of the blog. It’s also been wonderful to meet some of the anti-birthers in person—a really quality group.

So, here’s to three more years of birthers being birthers, after which I will pack it up on January 20, 2017.²

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¹The commenter TRUTH participated at both my personal blog and here. Through some mechanism that I never figured out, we ended up being friends on Facebook. That didn’t last because I found his views on several topics irritating.

²After the official closing of the blog, I’ll come up with some way to keep the content available online. I just won’t be actively writing and debunking. I wonder if there is an “Internet trust” to provide perpetual care to a blog. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine is archiving the site properly now. [Donate to the Internet Archive]