What's been missed in much of the resulting kerfuffle is this: Acton & Dystel, Obama's agency, didn't make up the bio on its own. They almost certainly received the critical details from Mr. Obama himself.
Breitbart News has obtained a promotional booklet produced in 1991 by Barack Obama's then-literary agency, Acton & Dystel, which touts Obama as "born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii."
The booklet, which was distributed to "business colleagues" in the publishing industry, includes a brief biography of Obama among the biographies of eighty-nine other authors represented by Acton & Dystel...
Barack Obama, the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii. The son of an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister, he attended Columbia University and worked as a financial journalist and editor for Business International Corporation. He served as project coordinator in Harlem for the New York Public Interest Research Group, and was Executive Director of the Developing Communities Project in Chicago’s South Side. His commitment to social and racial issues will be evident in his first book, Journeys in Black and White.
...The errant Obama biography in the Acton & Dystel booklet does not contradict the authenticity of Obama's birth certificate. Moreover, several contemporaneous accounts of Obama’s background describe Obama as having been born in Hawaii.
The biography does, however, fit a pattern in which Obama--or the people representing and supporting him--manipulate his public persona.
David Maraniss's forthcoming biography of Obama has reportedly confirmed, for example, that a girlfriend Obama described in Dreams from My Father was, in fact, an amalgam of several separate individuals.
To be clear, Andrew Breitbart was not a "birther", nor am I.
What is clear, however, is Obama's willingness to play fast-and-loose with the facts in order to sell his books and advance his career. My hunch: Obama crafted the book deal bio in order to make his background appear more worldly: a Kenyan birthplace is certainly more exotic than a Hawaiian one.
What's hilarious about this entire debacle is that it proves Barack Obama was a 'birther'.
I wish people would stop saying "I am not a birther, but..." It's like "I am not a racist, but.." Maybe if we don't buy into their control of the language, we'll be better off for it.
ReplyDeleteDYSTEL KNOWS WHO REALLY WROTE DFMF...
ReplyDeleteI'm less concerned with the idea he's really from Kenya and more concerned with his willingness to say whatever he needs to further his career. Between this story and Elizabeth Warren's lies about her ancestry, what scares me are the lengths people will go to move up the ladder.
ReplyDeleteEither Obama lied then, or he's lying now. Either one bodes poorly for him. Too bad no one outside FOX (perhaps) will touch this story. And those who dare to tread these waters better be prepared to be shamefully attacked by the left.
Since this broke on 'drudge' late Friday lets see how long it stays a main headline....bet it is gone by Saturday morning...
ReplyDeleteOccam's Razor might be helpful here. There are also web versions of this little bio. The original was updated in the late 90's - Kenya was still the birthplace. It was updated again in the mid 2000's - the Kenya 'mistake' was still 'not caught'. It was updated even up until Obama was an Illinois Senator, still have Kenya as the place of birth. Then, in 2007, while in a Presidential campaign, the 'mistake' is found and 'corrected'.
ReplyDeleteThe original was updated TWICE with new information and no change was made to the birthplace until it became a necessity.
Add to that the ridiculously stubborn refusal to release medical records and college transcripts. Do these transcripts show aid to a foreign student?
The Occam's Razor principle states that, given a complex 'puzzle' of seemingly conflicting information, the truth usually lies with the simplest explanation.
In this case, my bet says Obama was born in Kenya. That one simple condition explains all the wrangling, all the lawyers and all the obfuscation of what should have been a very simple thing to lay to rest.
The agency says it was poorly fact checked. So I ask where they got these erroneous facts. They say, not from Obama. So I ask again, where did they get the facts?
ReplyDeleteNo answer forthcoming.