Posted on 01/16/2009 10:49:56 AM PST by STARWISE
***This column was first published on Aug. 8, 2004***
###
When Barack Obama was only 33, he wrote a memoir, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.
I remember Obama telling me about his book when he visited my office in Washington back in 1999, when the Democrat was making what turned out to be a failed run for the House of Representatives.
Dan Shomon, Obama's aide, sent me a copy of the book.
I tucked Shomon's letter, dated Aug. 13, 1999, inside the cover and stuck the book on a shelf. There it sat until last June.
I dug it out and read it because Obama is virtually certain to win election to the U.S. Senate and become a national political figure. Because of Obama's soaring popularity, the book is being reissued, and 50,000 copies will be in bookstores on Tuesday.
I was dismayed, however, at what I found when I read Dreams from My Father.
***Composite characters. Changed names. And reams of dialogue between Obama and other people that moves the narrative along but is an approximation'' of the actual conversation.***
Except for public figures and his family, it is impossible to know who is real and who is not.
Obama disclosed in his introduction that he uses these literary devices to buttress his recollections.
He also kept a journal. For the sake of compression,'' Obama writes, some of the characters that appear are composites of people I've known and some events appear out of precise chronology.
With the exception of my family and a handful of public figures, the names of most characters have been changed for the sake of their privacy.''
The devices well serve to eloquently take the reader along on Obama's quest to understand his heritage as, as he writes, the son of a black man and white woman, an African and an American.''
Most of the book centers on his namesake father, a Harvard-educated Kenyan economist who he met only once, with less emphasis on his mother, who grew up in Kansas.
In the preface to the 2004 edition, Obama, 43, writes of his regret for focusing on the absent parent'' rather than on the parent who was the single constant in my life.''
Obama devotes several chapters in the middle of the book to his life in Chicago, where he moved after graduating from Columbia University in 1983 and where he returned after picking up a Harvard Law School degree in 1991.
Colorful characters populate the Chicago chapters: Smitty the barber, LaTisha, the part-time manicurist, Angela, Ruby, Mrs. Turner and one Rafiq al Shabazz. Who they really are, or if they are composites, you would not know from reading the book.
I questioned Obama about his memoir in a phone interview just before the Democratic convention.
I don't remember what Smitty's real name was. I think it was Wally,'' Obama said.
I asked him about a man called Marty Kaufman in the book; he was Obama's boss at his first job in Chicago as a community organizer at the Calumet Community Religious Conference.
Kaufman, Obama told me, is really Gerald Kellman. I tracked down Kellman and asked him about his portrayal in the book.
I think Barack was very accurate not only about myself but other people that I knew,'' Kellman told me.
That's reassuring, but most readers do not have the ability to call around to try to sort out the fictional characters from real people.
I say in the book it is my remembrances of what happened,'' Obama told me. I don't set it out as reportage . . . read the book for what it is worth.
"You reconstruct your memory for what happened. It is not reportage. It is not appearing in the New York Times or the Sun-Times. I say that explicitly in the book.''
I bounced my reservations about Obama's book off of Caryl Rivers, a journalism professor at Boston University and a media critic who writes fiction, non-fiction and screenplays.
Rivers did not have a problem with changing names. Using composite characters -- without telling the reader -- is troublesome, she said. When you start to bring in composite characters you immediately bring up the question of what is true,'' Rivers said.
Obama's home-run keynote address before the Democratic National Convention month vaulted him into the political stratosphere, and there is much interest in him. As in his book, his keynote dwelled much upon his life. I urge him to be meticulous from now on.
Several direct-mail pieces issued for Obama's primary campaign said he was a law professor at the University of Chicago. He is not. He is a senior lecturer (now on leave) at the school. In academia, there is a vast difference between the two titles. Details matter
~~PING!
What would you expect? Since the author wasn't actually there, he didn't hear the conversations or have recall of them.
Though it's strange how all those conversations were held in the style of Bill Ayers' writing...
“For the sake of compression,’’ Obama writes, some of the characters that appear are composites of people I’ve known and some events appear out of precise chronology.”
That would make it fiction, not memoir. But hey, what is truth when you can use a story to “buttress” your desire for power?
"Pimp My Story"
He prolly should’a called “Dreams From My Doobie”.
Details matter, dead right.
For the Democrat, sweet maternal solicitude. Were it a Republican--accusation and indignation.
It’s ok, very soon, he will be hanged with details...just wait.
Fake book. Fake president.
Newly Found Article Confirms Obama “Dreams” Fraud
Intellectual Fraud
Excerpt:
This essay, posted two days ago by Ben Smith on his Politico blog, represents the single best example of Obama’s native writing skills yet unearthed.
It should put an end to the charade that Barack Obama wrote his 1995 memoir “Dreams From My Father” unaided, but it probably won’t. The literary left has committed itself to Obama’s genius.
http://www.cashill.com/intellect_fraud/newly_found.htm
Link to 1983 essay:
http://www.politico.com/static/PPM116_obamaessay.html
LaTisha, the part-time manicurist
I doubt he made this name up.
He probably did, but everything he says, I’ve learned to take with a ton of salt.
During my recent research on google, it seems to me that most people in Hawaii believe that Obama was born in Kapiolani hospital.
But what Hawaii hospital does Obama himself say is his Hawaii birth hospital?
As we all know, Obama is conspicuously silent when asked about his Hawaii birth hospital.
But in my research on google, I came across a statement in an Illinois assembly publication that says Obama was born in Queens hospital.
1. Below is part of a long article in an Illinois publication on Obama. It says Obama was born in Queens Hospital.
2. My question is this: How would an Illinois publication know to write that Obama was born at Queens hospital in Hawaii on Aug. 4, 1961, since Obama's Hawaii short form birth certificate that Obama has displayed on his fight the smears website does not list Obama's birth hospital?
3. My answer is this: The only way, as I see it, for the Illinois publication to be able to list Queens Hawaii hospital as Obama's birth hospital is if Obama himself gave the information to the Illinois assembly publication that Queens hospital was Obama's Hawaii hospital back in Aug.4, 1961.
4. NOTE: The Illinois publication below is the "Illinois General Assembly: Encyclopedia II". It seems to be an official and important Illinois state publication:
"Barack Obama - Illinois General Assembly: Encyclopedia II
- Barack Obama - Early life
Barack Obama was born at the Queen's Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii to Harvard University-educated economist Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., a native of Kenya, and S. Ann Dunham, of Wichita, Kansas. At the time of Obama's birth, both his parents were students at the East-West Center at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Of his years in Hawaii, Obama has written, "The irony is that my decision to work in politics, and to pursue such a career in a big Mainland city, in some sense grows out of my Hawaiian upbringing, and the idea ... "
5. So, again, dear Obama, were you born in Hawaii at Queens or Kapiolani hospital? As I understand it, a baby cannot be born in two hospitals.
Sadly, Obama ain't talking.
Sad but true.
It must be part of the reason why he doesn't release his long form birth certificate.
I'm sorry, but I can't help saying that the United States Supreme Court will have BLOOD ON ITS HANDS if it allows Obama to take office on the Jan. 20, 2009 without first asking Obama to prove he is who he says he is.
1. For instance, look at the Afghanistan War: President Obama has already said that he plans to send more troops to Afghanistan.
2. Make no mistake about it, some of those young men and women sent to Afghanistan will be killed.
3. But what is the U.S. Supreme Court doing to make sure that Obama is even eligible to be president of the United States and that Obama has the authority and the power to send troops to Afghanistan, Iraq, and other war-torn places in the world?
4. Absolutely NOTHING, even though there is so much controversy surrounding Obama's origins that a detailed investigation is needed just to find out if Obama is who he says he is.
5. For instance, where was Obama born?
6. No one is sure.
7. Obama claims that he was born in Hawaii, but he won't release his long form Hawaii birth certificate----the one with the doctor and birth hospital names on it----and he won't release his Hawaii birth hospital records, even though sometimes he and his family say Obama was born in one Hawaii hospital, while at another time, they say Obama was born in another Hawaii hospital.
8. Hawaii high-ranking officials Onaka and Fukino kissing up to Obama: Hawaii high-ranking officials say that they have personally seen Obama's birth certificate in their files, but we have come to find out that in Hawaii, just because a person has a Hawaiian birth certificate in government files, it does not necessarily mean that the person was born in Hawaii, especially if the person was born in the early 1960s, just a few years after Hawaii became a state and the Hawaii pre-statehood government was in the midst of rushing to switch all their citizens' documents to meet the new State of Hawaii requirements.
9. And how about Pelosi? We have Congresswoman Pelosi signing an official Hawaii document where she states that Obama meets the legal eligibility requirements to be president, when, in reality, she has NOT presented any valid documents publicly to back up her claim that Obama meets the eligibility requirements of the Constitution of the United States.
10. And what about Obama himself?
11. Obama obviously has not gone out of his way to help resolve the controversies surrounding his background. In fact, Obama has gone out his way to HINDER any investigation into his background by refusing to release his Hawaii long form birth certificate, by refusing to release his Hawaii birth hospital records, and refusing to release his college records.
12. Also, Obama has, under oath, signed documents in all 50 states where he swears that he is a natural born citizen, but Obama has NOT provided a single state with valid, legal documents that prove that he, Obama, was even born in the United States.
13. I could go on and on as to why the U. S. Supreme Court, for the good of the American people, should order Obama to provide legal documents that prove that he, Obama, is eligible to be President of the United States under the laws of the Constitution of the Unite States.
14. But I will stop here. However, if others here want to post their reasons why the Supreme Court should order Obama to prove that he is eligible to be President of the United States, please be my guest.
15. So, again, I say this: If the U.S. Supreme Court does not order Obama to produce valid documents that prove that he, Obama, is eligible to be President of the United States, then the 9 justices will surely have BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS after the liar and fraud Obama starts ordering troops to war-torn places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and maybe the middle-east, and some of those fine young men and women are killed.
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