Cory Farley: You can't out-crazy the far right

One challenge of a weekly column is that when stuff happens, a lot of time can pass before you can comment. I may have a penetrating, opinion-changing, globally significant insight -- actually I have them all the time -- but when it finally appears in print, everybody says, "Jeez, Jon Stewart said that on Tuesday."

This week, time is on my side.

In an email to conservative friends shortly after President Obama announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed, I pretended to commiserate over the presidential triumph.

It was mostly a joke; I believe Americans should put minor differences aside and unite in this time of peril. But I'm an idealist, not an idiot, and I've watched them take unpatriotic joy in Obama's difficulties for two years.

In mock sympathy, then, I offered a "starter list" of talking points for conservatives to deny the president credit without appearing to be traitors themselves. Suggestions:

1. Osama's death doesn't matter. He was only a symbol.

2. Killing him was a mistake. We've created a martyr.

3. The operation was faked. They happened to kill a tall Arab and switched his DNA for the Osama sample they had.

4. If we'd elected McCain, this would have happened long ago.

5. Credit should go to George W. Bush. When he announced "Mission Accomplished," bin Laden was so depressed he began an eight-year suicide plan.

6. Obama, by insisting the body be recovered for political purposes, needlessly endangered American troops. He should have used air strikes.

7. Obama, by using aircraft, wasted taxpayers' money. Nothing takes the place of boots on the ground.

8. The operation was a political ploy, cynically timed to coincide with "» with, uh "» Ah, they'll think of something.

9. It never would have happened if Donald Trump hadn't kept the pressure on.

10. World Net Daily, which pretty much invented the birther controversy, was poised to announce that Obama's long form birth certificate is a fake. He ordered the raid as a distraction.

11. Bin Laden was killed long ago and has been frozen until an opportune time to reveal him. That's why the president's speech was late -- the body wasn't completely thawed.

That was Sunday night. On Monday, the government made it an even dozen:

12. Bin Laden's body was buried at sea, obviously to prevent examination by experts, who would have exposed the hoax.

Now, some of this stuff is weird (though no weirder, I submit, than the birther controversy or the notion that Obama is a Muslim). I made up the list in three or four minutes and sent it to friends as a gotcha, part of a mutual harassment program that goes back to 2000 when his daddy's Supreme Court appointed young George president.

What's really weird, though, is that by Tuesday, as I write this, Nos. 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10 and 12 have been seriously presented by conservative bloggers or politicians as versions of the truth. Only McCain, the helicopters and flash-frozen Osama have escaped notice.

Don't try to out-crazy the far right. It's impossible.

Cory Farley is a freelance writer living in Verdi.