Publisher offers to pay black Hawaiians for copies of birth certificates

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The publisher of a homespun conspiracy newspaper has several black activists in Hawaii alarmed after he offered to pay them each $50 for copies of their birth certificates so he can expose that President Barack Obama is secretly not American.

The scheme, hatched by “Molokai Advertiser-News” publisher George Peabody, came to the attention of reporter Anita Hofschneider with the Honolulu Civil Beat.

Hofschneider noted that Peabody contacted the  Martin Luther King Jr. Coalition, the African American Heritage Foundation of Maui and the Hawaii NAACP on August 25, asking each groups’ leaders for copies of their birth certificates.

“If you or your Negro members were born in Hawaii between 1955 to 1965, I will pay $50 for a copy of your Hawaii long form certified birth certificate,” he reportedly wrote.

A photo on the paper’s Facebook page shows a man smiling as he holds a copy of Jerome Corsi’s “Where Is The Birth Certificate,” a conspiracy tome that claims no lawful authority has ever verified the president’s birth certificate. Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie (D), who knew both of Obama’s parents at the time of the president’s  birth, apparently doesn’t count.

President Obama released his birth certificate long before seeking the nation’s highest office, and again last year after Republicans refused to acknowledge his citizenship. He’s since mocked the faux political issue by using the introductory song to Disney’s “The Lion King.”

The loudest proponent of what’s come to be known as the “birther” conspiracy, millionaire real estate mogul and Romney campaign surrogate Donald Trump, has continued to suggest that the president somehow faked his birth certificate.

Romney has said that while he doesn’t believe Trump’s favorite conspiracy theory, the former Massachusetts governor invoked it while speaking to a Republican audience in Michigan recently, saying nobody has ever asked him for his papers. He’s since been heavily criticized for what MSNBC host Chris Matthews called “playing the race card” by suggesting the president might not be an American.