WH: Birtherism 'a gratuitously stupid sideshow'

President Obama’s spokesman invoked the Birthers during his defense of Obama regarding the president’s failure to improve the political discourse in the capitol, noting that Birtherism, among other things, distracted from substantive policy issues.

“I can remember back in my early days as press secretary spending an awful lot of time answering questions about the president’s birth certificate,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney recalled today, “which seemed like a gratuitously stupid sideshow at a time when we had enormously important things to do.”