There is very little chance I’ll end up reading David Maraniss’ biography of Obama, although by all accounts it is a very detailed work which punctures much of Obama’s self-portryal (you remember the “composite” girlfriend revealed in a pre-release excerpt).
Ben Smith has read the book, and finds:
David Maraniss’s new biography of Barack Obama is the first sustained challenge to Obama’s control over his own story, a firm and occasionally brutal debunking of Obama’s bestselling 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father.
Maraniss’s Barack Obama: The Story punctures two sets of falsehoods: The family tales Obama passed on, unknowing; and the stories Obama made up. The 672-page book closes before Obama enters law school, and Maraniss has promised another volumne, but by its conclusion I counted 38 instances in which the biographer convincingly disputes significant elements of Obama’s own story of his life and his family history.
One sentence in Smith’s review jumped out at me:
Maraniss finds that Obama’s young life was basically conventional, his personal struggles prosaic and later exaggerated.
Smith, again:
Some of Maraniss’s most surprising debunking, though, comes in the area of family lore, where he disputes a long string of stories on three continents, though perhaps no more than most of us have picked up from garrulous grandparents and great uncles. And his corrections are, at times, a bit harsh.
It appears that I was right on October 12, 2008, in the very first blog post at Legal Insurrection, Obama is “Door No. 2″:
Obama may be everything good, or the promise Obama embodies may just be a figment of our own imagination….
Just about the only thing we know about Obama is what he has told us about himself.
And what he told us about himself mostly was fiction.
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We elected a fiction is very civil.
I’d put it thus…
We elected a lie.
Just imagine who, or what, these people will elect.
Worse yet, these amoral chicks are old enough to vote.
Yet more proof that parenting and education should never be left to the government.
I prefer the fiction to the facts we now know.
We elected walking, talking bullsh!t in a nice suit.
44 and Lizzie Warren<(although not elected, yet)..
Both writers and speakers extraordinaire, of fiction
Dear Leader’s identity as a Manchurian candidate was carefully crafted by Bill Ayers and bolstered by the LSM.
Certainly what he said about what he would do in office was a fiction. I’d call it betrayal.
He was an empty mirrored vessel. In the reflection people saw themselves and their own high ideals, and they imagined him to share their hopes and dreams. He did not.
Some are starting to realize he has no core, or that what core there may be is diseased and twisted.
But don’t blame them, or chastise them. Welcome them back to the light, because their goodness and high ideals, in many ways, mirror our own. Perhaps they will learn from this mistake, and we will be stronger as a nation after we fix this error.
You make an excellent point, Rose. We have to welcome those who had strayed and so grievously injured their nation.
Zig Ziglar makes the observation that you cannot sell a product or service to someone by belittling their past purchasing decisions – in other words, you can’t convince them to buy a Chevy if you tell them they were stupid for buying a Ford last time.
We will have to forgive them their transgression and make an affirmative case for the election of Mr. Romney (in spite of the fact that he may not have been your first, second or third choice as the Republican nominee).
There is no more pressing and urgent necessity in America right now than firing Barack Obama and heaving his festering and malignant presidency upon the ash heap of American history.
If Barack Obama had a President, he would look like him.
“And his corrections are, at times, a bit harsh.”
I don’t think that’s possible. In a just society which cared about its core values, especially those as unique and beautiful as ours, a Barack Obama would never have been elected. But given that momentary lapse of judgment, a just society would have already completed its impeachment with an eye toward a trial for treason. While I want Obama to go, it will be a shame when he does to listen to the revisionists sentimentalize him and to watch him receive the obligatory honors of an ex-President and travel the world receiving lavish speaking fees. He should be branded and dishonered, sent hither from the land never to return. He is a violation and degradation — an anti-American scourge.
But given that momentary lapse of judgment, a just society would have already completed its impeachment with an eye toward a trial for treason.
Now, we’re getting somewhere.
I can’t say how long, possibly a decade or two, the progressives have identified Obama as a possible Presidential candidate-
One thing was certain-to turn free America into a marxist State, the President would have to be a minority.
Why?
As you can plainly see–being “the first black President”, you are not allowed to even ask him a question, let alone criticize…
How on Earth could it ever be possible to impeach him?
No, Obama has free reign to do as he pleases, and nothing can be done to stop him so long as he is black-
He knows it, and the people that put him in power know it.
All you can to is un-elect him…and hope like hell he respects the validity of the election, and actually leaves power
But! but , he has oh so many “friends” on Facebook dontcha know!!
When you collate this recent act with the class-warfare rhetoric, the “punish our enemies” threats, the president’s and Eric Holder’s serial racialist statements, the huge borrowing, the national-security leaks, the takeover of health care, the push for redistributive taxes, and even the trivial appointments like a Van Jones, Anita Dunn, or Armendariz, you can fairly conclude that Obama most certainly did not like the way the United States operated for the last 30 or so years, and has tried his best, through hook or crook, to change America in ways that simply were not possible through legislative or even judicial action. Give the president credit. He has thrown down the gauntlet and essentially boasted: This is my vision of the way the new America should work — and if you don’t like it, try stopping me in November, if you dare.
–VD Hanson
Yep. “The New America”.
[…] We elected a fiction There is very little chance I'll end up reading David Maranis' biography of Obama, although by all accounts it is a very detailed work which punctures much of … Read more on legal Insurrection (blog) […]
I found this interesting. In “Dreams,” Obama goes on for three pages about meeting his half brother, Ndesandjo on his first visit to Kenya, around 1988. Who the heck is this man?
**This all sounds legitimate, but when Obama was interviewed about Ndesandjo on the occasion of a state visit to China in 2009, he said dismissively, “Well, you know, I don’t know him well.”(at ~1:50 in this CNN video). Obama then added the kicker that deepens the Obama mystery, “I met him for the first time a couple of years ago.”**
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/06/one_more_dubious_story_in_the_obama_saga.html#ixzz1y3zOIvzM
What and interesting subject for Father’s day. As a child Obama heard a great many lies. His mother may have told a couple of whopper but these seem to have been told to protect him from some bitter truths about his father’s lack of character. The adult men in his is life, however, all seemed to bave been losers who told self aggrandizing fables.
Obama cannot be blamed for his pathologies. As a child, he was subjected to terrible forces, not least of which was abandonment by both parents.
What he can be blamed for is his inflicting his pathologies on us.
Rags, get your head out of the sand. No one is to blame in that imaginary family. Repeat after me…….”It is Bush’s fault.”
Let us treat ourselves to a form of Hope, heretofore unseen among the reports and discussions and hagiographies of the current President. Which would be that, over some hopefully brief epoch, the labors of Stanley Kurtz and now David Maranis be rewarded by a large-scale awakening to the mendaciously constructed mythology of this President’s past and intentions, and a large-scale wave of common sense and concern for the general benefit of all US citizens rises and washes the current Chicago gang out of Washington. It’s late, but not too late.
Professor, read this for a MUCH better review of Maraniss’ book.
http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2012/06/10/a-man-is-whatever-autobiography-he-is-in/
Maraniss, correctly, describes ‘Dreams from my Father’ as a series of ephiphanies. What he found out was that the most egregious examples of Obama fabricating his life story out of whole cloth occur at precisely these epiphanies. They are completely made up. Not only did the events not happen, but the people involved in them don’t exist or are, at best, ‘composites’.
Without these epiphanies to move the story along, ‘Dreams’ is nothing. There’s literally no story told.
You should know better than to use Ben Smith as a source!
Here’s a good summary of what Ben Smith is about:
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/06/07/Art-Bensmithing-Obama-New-Party
The Prof said: “And what he told us about himself mostly was fiction.”
Heh… Maybe included that birth certificate under suspicion by Sheriff Joe!
Speaking of Obama fictions, what’s with Biden undercutting a fiction that Obama made about Biden?
My dad never worked in a Food Fair. My dad never wore a blue collar, Barack makes me sound like I just climbed out of a mine in Scranton, Pennsylvania carrying a lunch bucket,” Vice President Joe Biden said at a conference with U.S. mayors in Orlando.
“No one in my family worked in a factory,” Biden added
Biden Says He’s Not Blue Collar: “No One In My Family Worked In A Factory”
Seems like some of the lug nuts are coming loose on the Obama bus – wonder when the wheels start flying off.
“It appears that I was right on October 12, 2008, in the very first blog post at Legal Insurrection, Obama is ‘Door No. 2.'”
Monty Hall is still alive. He’s 90. I love him. Let’s bring him out of retirement.
New game show idea: “Let’s Make an Ideal Identity.”
Look at it from Obama’s and Dizzy Miss Lizzy Warren’s point of view.
If you picked Door No. 1, and then Monty Hall opens up Door No. 3, which has a run-of-the-mill white chick identity, in the case of Dizzy, and a “conventional, prosaic personal struggles” kind of identity, in the case of Obama …
… and he then offers you the opportunity to switch your choice to Door No. 2, in hopes of winning the blonde, blue-eyed, high cheek-boned Native American princess identity, or the uniquely unique, cool, hopey-changey, divine-one-who-will-solve-all-our-problems-without-breaking-a-sweat-and-slowjam-his-way-to-universal-recognition-as-the-greatest-being-who-ever-graced-the-earth identity …
Come on. Wouldn’t you go for Door No. 2, too?
Bernie Quigly would be the first to tell you that the new identity would not be some phony game-show-prize identity.
It would be true and real in “mythical terms.” “[I]t is not a lie to want to be Indian [or a divine Choom Lord] and to imagine your ancestors were. It is to be free of Europeanism.”
[…] Professor Jacobson: Just about the only thing we know about Obama is what he has told us about himself. […]
We elected the Wizard of Oz… before the curtain was opened.
Again, the conventional media failed: R.I.P. Fourth Estate 1789 – ca. 1974;
Thee is no reason to believe this book anymore than Obama’s. IMO they have realized one game is up & there needs to be a new narrative.
Plus -the few pics I have seen from this book Obama’s head is ginormous compared to those around him.
Whereas in a recent pic 9 year old Sasha’s head is almost as big – & Malia’s head is already as long at 14. Clearly both have a lot of growing to go & I am definetely afraid for them if in fact those earlier Barack pics are true.
Most mysteriously his head has shrunk to minute proportions in the OBL Situation room . Yes that is him in the corner with the weeny head.
It is a grand mystery & I’ve only got to the size of his head.
Obama’s proctologist has even uglier details.
Given the same willingness to lie and benefit of a media totally unwilling to vet any negatives, indeed, willing to hide them when found, other fancy talkers in American history could just as easily won the White House: Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, WC Fields, etc.
Objection: Relevance. I’m no fan of Obama, but a sitting president has to run on his record, not on the contents of his college yearbook.
[…] “We elected a fiction“, quips law professor William A. Jacobson. […]
As damning as Maranis’ book is for Obama the real condemnation should be found for the members of the media who failed to vette a Presidential candidate.
The many talking heads who oohed and aahed over Obama’s supposed literary prowess clearly never actually READ the work they praised. That is shown by the same media morons who were caught off guard by the revelation found in Obama’s book that he had eaten dog.
Is there anything more telling about the lack of character, honor and integrity among the “real journalists”? I’m looking at you, Juan Williams.
It is clear that the Democrats elevated a man for one reason only. His skin color. That is racism, by definition. By not giving the same scrutiny to a man because of his skin color you are claiming that he can’t be the equal of others if tempered in the same fire. That the man of color benefits from your racism does not change the fact that racism was at work.
Today, with a record of time in office that is nothing but negative, the same people who refused to look at Obama with the same depth they used on Hilary Clinton or John McCain are openly lying when they charge that people’s lack of support for Obama is racism.
The “news” doesn’t belong to NBC, ABC, CBS or even Fox. It belongs to us. If those who presume to be our minders are betraying us it is time to replace them.