Simple logic can often be fraught with fallacy.
Indeed it can ...
It seems like you are cherry-picking facts - while ignoring others - to support your own preferred narrative.
Cherry picking? I didn't cherry pick anything. And I don't have a preferred narrative, I simply refuse to create a false premise so that I can reach a desired conclusion.
Same Snopes link you posted. It tells the tale of how the birther theory first emerged on FreeRepublic, and the fact that the Hillary Clinton supporters picked it up (being the irresistible "good ammo" that is was) and spread it via forwarded e-mails.
You left out the following parts that seems to shed a little more light on the rather simplistic rendition above:
"The likeliest point of origin we've been able to find was a post on conservative message board FreeRepublic.com dated 1 March 2008 (which, according to a report in The Telegraph, was at least a month before Clinton supporters got on the e-mail bandwagon):"
"The same rumor was repeated, with elaborations, four days later on the conservative blog Ruthless Roundup:"
Wanna make any bets on how far and wide - "into the wild" - that got spread ?
I didn't leave it out. I don't dispute at all the point of origin, nor that it was repeated on another Blog (or several). But it was still at that point contained to, for lack of a better word,
wacko websites.
And this:
"The conspiracy theory was already fully formed at this point. Clearly, the Clinton supporters accused of spreading it via forwarded e-mails knew "good ammo" when they saw it, but, as the above posts show, they deserve neither credit nor blame for the invention of birtherism. "
Remember: the claim offered by you was that a Clinton supporter started it ...
That's the salient paragraph of my opinion and statement, thank you. Again, I do not dispute at all the origin of birtherism, nor that it was fully formed before the Clinton supporters picked it up. But no, I did not offer up a claim that a Clinton supporter started birtherism, I claimed they started the
movement itself, i.e., "
spreading it via forwarded e-mails..." Prior to all those emails going out, it was just another conspiracy theory sitting on a few wacko websites.
Can't have a movement without, you know, movement. The Clinton supporters moved it. They moved it from the pages of the FreeRepublic and out into the wild.
Any actual evidence of that ?
Or is it just another bit of
"simple logic ... fraught with fallacy" ?
No, it's not a bit of simple logic fraught with fallacy (I think you're mixing posts together here, as the logical fallacy comment was about tax returns, not birtherism). The "actual evidence of that" is still right there on the same Snopes link you posted, final paragraph, the one you just got through posting. The only places that theory existed, before the Clinton supporters started a concerted campaign of spreading the theory by forwarding it via emails, was on FreeRepublic, Ruthless Roundup, and a handful of other right wing wacko websites. It was contained, to the caves and dens of right wing wackos, not out in the wild. But the spreading of the theory using emails is what got it outside of the confines of right wing wackodom and into the email boxes of those on the outside. And it was the spreading of those emails that started the movement. Not the theory, but the movement.
The Snopes piece makes it very clear that the Clinton supporters did not invent the notion of birtherism, but it also makes it just as clear that it was the Clinton supporters that spread the theory via email. The Snopes site does not directly address started the actual Birther Movement, other than by direct inference where they note, twice, that Clinton supporters were the ones spreading the birther theory. Before those emails went out, there was no movement of the theory, and no Birther Movement (a group of people working together to
advance their shared political, social, or artistic ideas).
