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Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates - Ta-Nehisi Coates is a senior editor for The Atlantic, where he writes about culture, politics, and social issues for TheAtlantic.com and the magazine. He is the author of the memoir The Beautiful Struggle. More

Born in 1975, the product of two beautiful parents. Raised in West Baltimore—not quite The Wire, but sometimes ill all the same. Studied at the Mecca for some years in the mid-’90s. Emerged with a purpose, if not a degree. Slowly migrated up the East Coast with a baby and my beloved, until I reached the shores of Harlem. Wrote some stuff along the way.

When The Birthers Are Embarrassed By You...

By Ta-Nehisi Coates
Aug 5 2009, 10:00 AM ET Comment

You've probably gone too far:

The new focus on a bogus document from an anonymous source has riven the small community of activists who are trying to prove that Barack Obama cannot be president of the United States. The day after the image appeared online, prominent "birther" attorneys and activists worried that Taitz was doing real, irreversible damage to their movement. As she's become the public face of the "birther cause"-on Monday, MSNBC labeled her a "leader" of the "birther movement"-other figures in the "birther" community are distancing themselves from her work and from this document.

"If this turns out to be a bad document that she's posted, I think it gives the non-birthers an argument to say: 'See, these people don't know what they're doing,'" said Philip J. Berg, a Pennsylvania attorney who filed the first "eligibility" lawsuit against Obama one year ago this month. "If this document turns out to be a phony, I wouldn't be surprised to find that the non-birthers put it out there."

Right. The "non-birthers."



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