George Will's Atrophied Intellectual Curiosity. He may well have exhausted his shelf life.

For all his contributions to the cause, and they have been many, conservative media personality George Will may well have exhausted his shelf life.

In his much-discussed Sunday column, Will all too predictably excoriated those Republicans politicians and pundits who have questioned Obama's origins and ideology.

Most troubling was Will's slam of WOR Radio host Steve Malzberg for asking would-be presidential candidate Mike Huckabee a question that strikes those of us who have done some investigating as altogether reasonable:

Asked Malzberg, "Don't you think it's fair also to ask [Barack Obama] . . . how come we don't have a health record, we don't have a college record, we don't have a birth certificate . . . . Don't you think we deserve to know more about this man?"

According to Will, Huckabee should have answered, "I've seen paranoia, goodbye." Why paranoia, George? Why is it unreasonable for a media person to ask basic questions for which we still have no answers?

If people in Will's position had asked these questions in 2008, Barack Obama would not be president today. But they did not. They have continued to operate under the mid-twentieth century William Buckley model of a conservative commentator: be wise, be droll, and stick to the news the other guys put on the table lest someone think you kooky.

Buckley, however, operated before the Internet. He had little choice but to comment on the other guy's news. So did Will in the early years of his career, but now he has no such excuse. The information is out there for those who look. Will does not have to rely on what the Post tells him

As I show in my new book, Deconstructing Obama, the Post's award-winning reporter David Maraniss wrote a lengthy biographical piece on the next president two months before the election and made a hash of it. Among other things, he missed the fact that Obama and mother, Ann Dunham, spent the first year of Obama's life in Washington State without Barack Obama Sr.

The little Obama family, the one that Obama boasted about in his two convention speeches, never was. Barack Obama ascended to the presidency on a profoundly and provably false origins story, but Will would have us stick with the counterfeit story because it has the Post's imprimatur.

Like too many conservatives in Washington, Will has chosen not to know any more than the Post tells him. That is bad enough. But when he scolds those who chosen to know more, he makes me remember why I can no longer bring myself to watch Sunday morning TV.

Jack's Book-TV presentation on Deconstructing Obama will air on C-SPAN II this Saturday evening at 7 PM EST and Sunday morning at 10 AM.

Years ago I would read Will’s columns religiously in the newspaper. On Sundays I would watch him on that David Brinkley show with Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts. I watched that show for a while even after Brinkley left. Methinks that Will spent far too much time around Donaldson and Cokie. Slowly, and after a while, I stopped watching that show, and eventually gave up on Sunday newspapers too. I haven’t read Will in years. There’s no point. He passed the expiration date stamped on his forehead about 10 years ago. Meaning, he should have retired and just gone to ballparks to spend his declining years watching ballgames, and maybe issuing an occasional missive about the sorry state of major league baseball.

George Will never explained why Steve Malzberg’s question isn’t relevant to America. He simply ASSUMES that those questions are the stuff of conspiracy theories.

But the fact still remains, all of the above things that Malzberg wants America to know about were STANDARD information open to the public by previous presidents.

For instance, We know the college grades of Al Gore, John Kerry and Dubya (we also know that all of them did not get good grades). We know that Hillary wrote her college thesis about Saul Alinsky.

Now, we know almost nothing about Obama’s academic life in college. Why is ASKING that question out of bounds? Goerge Will never answers that question in his column.

I think Will is one of those alleged “conservatives” that continues to feed the impression of a tired, elite, appeasing has-been.

While I am sure that he is a very smart guy, smart guys are just as prone to staying in the same old groove that they so fondly remember from years ago.

Things have changed, and it appears that Mr. Will, intellect and all, does not get it at this point. Perhaps he’s been on the lefty “cocktails 7:00” list a bit too long.

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