We ordinarily wouldn’t really pay attention to Joel Gilbert, a Bob Dylan enthusiast who also dabbles in anti-Obama conspiracy theories, most recently making a film that alleges that the president’s real father is labor activist and communist party organizer Frank Marshall Davis.

But when Bill Armistead, the chairman of the Alabama Republican Party, started promoting Gilbert’s movie, “Dreams from My Real Father,” and when news surfaced that Gilbert was sending thousands of copies of his movie gratis to households in swing states and that conservative groups were holding showings, we thought we should start keeping track of him.

Gilbert has a spiel that he repeats pretty much word for word on media appearances, but once in a while he comes up with something new (for instance when he said that the Aurora movie theater shooting could very well have been an Obama administration inside job).