May 18, 2012
When Joel Pollak, a columnist for Brietbart.com, exposed his findings that a biographical sketch of Barak Obama in 1991 stated that he “was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii,” senior management deemed it prudent to distance itself from the “Birther” issue with this disclaimer:
Andrew Breitbart was never a "Birther," and Breitbart News is a site that has never advocated the narrative of "Birtherism." In fact, Andrew believed, as we do, that President Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 4, 1961…
[The biographical sketch that we discovered] is evidence — not of the President's foreign origin, but that Barack Obama's public persona has perhaps been presented differently at different times.
The sketch, contained in a 36-page promotional booklet along with those of 89 other authors, was designed to target interested persons in the publishing industry about upcoming books by the authors. Obama at the time was promoting a book entitled Journeys in Black and White that he failed to complete. But the booklet remained in the public domain from 1991 until April 2007 when it was “corrected.” In another release by Brieitbart, the original language of Obama’s bio read:
BARACK OBAMA is the junior Democratic senator from Illinois and was the dynamic keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He was also the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. He was born in Kenya to an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister and was raised in Indonesia, Hawaii, and Chicago…
But two months after Obama launched his presidential campaign in February of 2007, the bio, then 16 years old but still available on the Internet, was changed:
BARACK OBAMA is the junior Democratic senator from Illinois and was the dynamic keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He was also the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. He was born in Hawaii to an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister and was raised in Indonesia, Hawaii, and Chicago…
Another conservative commentator distancing himself from any discussion that such revelations lend credence to efforts of “Birthers” to expose Obama’s real background was Erick Erickson of RedState.com:
I do not believe Barack Obama was born in Kenya. I don’t think it matters even if he were born overseas because his mother was an American citizen. I’m not going to debate it with the cult of birtherism…
The point is not that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. The point is that Barack Obama has repeatedly been perfectly okay embellishing and having others embellish his qualifications and biography to make himself someone unique instead of just another Chicago politician.
And then, in perfect sync with the mainstream media’s proven efforts to direct attention away from the “third-rail” of “Birtherism,” Erickson goes on to list extensively other changes, modifications, amplifications and glorifications of Obama’s past that he has made, or has allowed to be made for him, in order to create and maintain his unique “persona” in keeping with the mainstream media’s sugar-coated view of the Chicago politician. That way Erickson redirects the conversation away from the “Birther” issue and focuses instead on something less painful and volatile and risky.
The media has known about Obama’s Kenya background for years. The Associated Press published an article about Obama when he was running for the Illinois Senate in 2004 which appeared here with the headline: “Kenyan-born Obama all set for US Senate,” going on to explain that:
Kenyan-born US Senate hopeful, Barrack [sic] Obama, appeared set to take over the Illinois Senate seat after his main rival, Jack Ryan, dropped out of the race on Friday night amid a furor over lurid sex club allegations.
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