Yesterday, Big Government reported that back in 1991, Obama’s literary agency, Acton & Dystel, put out a bio claiming he was born in Kenya:
Which is weird, because as all reasonable people know by now, Obama was born in Hawaii.
And of course, the left’s reaction has been predictable: “Hurr, hurr, Birthers, derp derp!” Because apparently, sometime within the last 24 hours, “Birther” has been redefined to mean “somebody who believes Obama wasn’t born in Kenya.” The word “Birther” means whatever lefties need it to mean, at the moment they need it to mean that. Just like every other word in every other language.
Unless you’re a credulous rube, it sure does look like Obama told his literary agency that he was born in Kenya for some reason. And the false information wasn’t corrected until April 2007, a couple of months after he launched his presidential campaign.
“But wait,” you protest. “How do you know Obama wrote that? How do you know he ever even saw it? Shut up!” Well, we all know that Obama is the exception to every rule, so maybe he’s the exception to this one too. Author and television producer Steve Boman writes at Breitbart.com about his own mid-’90s working relationship with literary agent Miriam Goderich, the woman who now claims the “born in Kenya” misinformation was somehow a “fact-checking error”:
Now let me say right up front: when it comes to Obama, I’m not going to speculate who wrote what, when. Dystel had assistants, one of whom is now her partner, Miriam Goderich, who says the whole Obama-born-in-Kenya thing was a fact-checking mistake by her. And I cannot speak specifically to the mechanism of Dystel’s publicity. (Alas, Dystel was unable to sell anything I wrote, so she had no reason to promote me, but I’m getting ahead of myself.)
I can speak of what she was like to work with and how she generated material. In my dealings with Dystel, I found her exceptionally thorough and very professional. She had a template she wanted non-fiction writers to follow, and my writing partner and I followed her template closely. She was rather fastidious, going so far as to mail a personal “Season’s Greetings” card in December.
All material she used in our proposals came directly from me and my writing partner. She edited our rough-draft proposals and gave us feedback, but the final versions were all ours. Our final versions, bio included, were then simply photo-copied, by us, and distributed to potential publishers. This was back in the pre-Google days, recall.
I was asked to write the bio in the third person.
Lefties, I will now pause while you go look up “third person.”
…
Got it? Okay.
So, either Obama wrote his own bio, as Boman was required to, or he didn’t. If he did, why did he claim he was born in Kenya, when we all know he was actually born in Hawaii?
If Obama didn’t write that, for whatever reason, who did? Why did that person think Obama was born in Kenya? In what possible sense is botching a client’s birthplace by 10,000 miles a “fact-checking error”? And why did Obama let it slide for 16 years, until he decided to run for president?
I suppose it’s possible that Obama told the truth and wrote “born in Hawaii,” but then this fact-checker changed it to “Kenya.” If that’s what happened, why did it happen?
And is there a particular reason I’m not supposed to ask any of these things?
Maybe Miriam Goderich needs more time to work on her story. I tried asking her about it this morning:
No response yet, but I’ll let you know.
Obama was born in Hawaii. Why did he claim otherwise? And if he didn’t, who did and why?
Put on your thinking caps, Obama fans. You can do this.
Update: Hey, guess what? It was just a typo!
Update: Move it along, people. Nothing to see here.
