I have to find it, but I read an interview with someone who worked with Obama at that writing place. The bottom line is that it was glorified ad copy or something like that. I’ll look for the article.
(no link)
“The Barack Obama Story’ - Harvard Law Review gets its first black president
THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE - Sunday, April 1, 1990
Author: TAMMERLIN DRUMMOND: Los Angeles Times
EXCERPT
Although some question what personal goals motivate Obama , his interest in social issues is deeply grounded. At Occidental College in Los Angeles, Obama studied international relations and spent much of his time helping to organize anti-apartheid protests. In his junior year, he transferred to Columbia University, “more for what (New York City) had to offer than for the education,” he said.
After graduating, Obama landed a job writing manuals for a New York-based international trade publication. Once his college loans were paid off, he took a $13,000-a-year job as director for the Developing Communities Project, a church-based social action group in Chicago.
There, he and a coalition of ministers set out to improve living conditions in poor neighborhoods plagued by crime and high unemployment. Obama helped form a tenants’ rights group in the housing projects and established a job-training program.
After four years, Obama decided it was time to move on. He wanted to learn how to use the political system to effect social change. He set his sights on Harvard Law School, where he quickly distinguished himself as a top student.
He was soon chosen, through the strength of his writing and grades, to serve as one of 80 student editors on the law review. Unlike many peer-review professional journals, the law review is run solely by students. It is widely considered to be the major forum for current legal debate and consequently is watched closely by courts around the country.
In his second year at law school, Obama decided to run for law-review president after a conversation with a black friend. “I said I was not planning to run, and he said, “Yes, you are because that is a door that needs to be kicked down and you can take it down.”’
It was a marathon selection process, an arcane throwback to the early days of the review. The student editors deliberated behind closed doors from 8:30 a.m. until early the next day. The 19 anxious candidates took turns cooking breakfast, lunch and dinner for the selection committee, whose members emerged with a historic decision.
But few students at the law review were prepared for the deluge of interview requests for Obama from newspapers, radio and television stations. Some students made light of the media invasion, posting a memo entitled “The Barack Obama Story, a Made for TV Movie, Starring Blair Underwood as Barack Obama .”
Yet tensions were building. White students grumbled about the attention paid to Obama ‘s race. Black students criticized him for not choosing more blacks for other top positions at the review. Caught in the cross-fire, Obama , who has a tendency toward understatement, downplayed his own achievements.
“For every one of me, there are thousands of young black kids with the same energies, enthusiasm and talent that I have who have not gotten the opportunity because of crime, drugs and poverty,” he said. “I think my election does symbolize progress, but I don’t want people to forget that there is still a lot of work to be done.”
Describing Obama , fellow students and professors point to a self-confidence tempered by modesty as one of his greatest attributes.
“He’s very unusual, in the sense that other students who might have something approximating his degree of insight are very intimidating to other students or inconsiderate and thoughtless,” said Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor. “He’s able to build upon what other students say and see what’s valuable in their comments without belittling them.”
I was wrong, it was more than glorified ad copy, but it was not the influential job Obama describes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/us/politics/30obama.html
Good luck trying to find the article, it was scrubbed from the net a week after I found it. The article I found was a woman from Utah who gushingly described her first job after graduating from University and she was Jr’s co-worker.(Title was “Utahn recounts sharing job with Obama in New York”) Analyze this has one of his other co-workers describing how Jr exaggerated his importance at BIC which turned into a veritable reunion of former workers. The link to it is here”
http://www.analyzethis.net/blog/2005/07/09/barack-obama-embellishes-his-resume/