Early Obama Letter Confirms Inability to Write

American Thinker ^ | 8/29/11 | Jack Cashill

[American Dream 246]

On November 16, 1990, Barack Obama, then president of the Harvard Law Review, published a letter in the Harvard Law Record, an independent Harvard Law School newspaper, championing affirmative action.

Although a paragraph from this letter was excerpted in David Remnick's biography of Obama, The Bridge, I had not seen the letter in its entirety before this week. Not surprisingly, it confirms everything I know about Barack Obama, the writer and thinker.

Obama was prompted to write by an earlier letter from a Mr. Jim Chen that criticized Harvard Law Review's affirmative action policies. Specifically, Chen had argued that affirmative action stigmatized its presumed beneficiaries.

The response is classic Obama: patronizing, dishonest, syntactically muddled, and grammatically challenged. In the very first sentence Obama leads with his signature failing, one on full display in his earlier published work: his inability to make subject and predicate agree.

"Since the merits of the Law Review's selection policy has been the subject of commentary for the last three issues," wrote Obama, "I'd like to take the time to clarify exactly how our selection process works."

If Obama were as smart as a fifth-grader, he would know, of course, that "merits ... have." Were there such a thing as a literary Darwin Award, Obama could have won it on this on one sentence alone. He had vindicated Chen in his first ten words.

Although the letter is fewer than a thousand words long, Obama repeats the subject-predicate error at least two more times. In one sentence, he seemingly cannot make up his mind as to which verb option is correct so he tries both: "Approximately half of this first batch is chosen ... the other half are selected ... "

[Jeff Chandler]

Because it is and people make it all the time. Graduate of the most elite universities or not.

"Since the merits of the Law Review's selection policy has been the "

The proximity of the object of the preposition to the verb often fools writers who aren't used to having their work criticized, such those benefiting from Affirmative Action.

President of the Harvard Law Review indeed.

[BuckeyeTexan]

Is Barack Obama dumb?

[aruanan]

Is Barack Obama dumb?

He's the liberal version of the dumb blond: he's getting by on his looks.

[Georgia Girl 2]

Well at least he didn’t say “Since you has aksed me about the merits of the Law Review” LOL!

[American Dream 246]

For formal writing, such as a letter being published by the Harvard Law Review, those same mistakes are inexcusable.

AMEN

[LucyT]

Check out Article, and comments, then # 8 and # 25.

Thanks, Fractal Trader.

[The_Reader_David]

The only interesting thing about this story is that someone found something about Obama pre-2008 that is outside the official narrative set-forth in Dreams of My Father.

So, he got subject-verb agreement wrong when the subject was separated by a long modifying clause containing a noun with a different grammatical number, big deal. Only grammatical pecksniffs regard such a lapse as indicative of lack of intelligence. More likely it's indicative of lack of proofreading. And don't forget he was educated in Indonesian schools, hardly the place to pick up the fine points of English grammar. The real proof he's not very bright is provided by the dog that's not barking: if he were smart, he'd have released his Occidental, Columbia and Harvard transcripts to prove it. Well, unless the real reason for hiding them is that he was admitted as an international student with Indonesian citizenship, in which case they'd be hidden away even if they showed a 4.0 average.

[rxsid]

"The real proof he's not very bright is provided by the dog that's not barking: if he were smart, he'd have released his Occidental, Columbia and Harvard transcripts to prove it. Well, unless the real reason for hiding them is that he was admitted as an international student with Indonesian citizenship, in which case they'd be hidden away even if they showed a 4.0 average. "

Indeed!

[libstripper]

No doubt anyone can make such mistakes, especially when quickly posting to a blog. However, when that individual is President of the Harvard Law Review, it behooves him to check his own writing before publishing such drivel, lest he and the Review be found to have intellectual egg on their collective ties.

[the invisib1e hand]

it’s well known that being “audacious” requires a type of smart that universities did not used to award degrees in.

[libstripper]

Having been on a law review in the 1960's, I can say there is a lot of difference between an article that's very heavily edited and reviewed, often to the point where it is hard to say who the real author is, and a letter that is not too heavily reviewed and mostly the sole work of its writer. However, it's rather remarkable that this ungrammatical piece of drivel was ever published without the grammatical errors being corrected. Looks like the Illegal did his own editing and nobody wanted to cross him by making the necessary corrections.

[fnord]

half is .... half are

he left out “half be”

maybe “half done be”

[steelyourfaith]

OOps. Looks like it is time for another lackey from the main stream media to counter this revelation with another twisted logic screed to the effect that this is merely further proof of Obama's high IQ and transcendent brilliance.

Seriously, I am amused that the media continue to expend ever more of their own shrinking credibility propping up the claim that Obama is bright.

I don't mind so much that Obama is of limited intelligence. Clearly, the requirement to be a good President does not include being a genius. It is more important that the occupant of the White House have integrity, honesty, maturity, work ethic, common sense, and an understanding of the principles that made America great.

It is far more important that Obama doesn't have any of these qualities either.

[mojitojoe]

Yes

[calex59]

Or maybe it wasn’t proofread by Barry at all. But if you want to use the mistake as proof that Obama’s stupid, be my guest.

Personally, I feel there are better examples of how stupid Bozo is. One of them being the fact he doesn't know how to pronounce corpsman. Only a total frickin' idiot would not know how to do that. Surely a Harvard Graduate, if he really is one, would know how to pronounce it. Surely the CIC should know how.

[calex59]

Well at least he didn’t say “Since you has aksed me about the merits of the Law Review” LOL!

Nope, he would have said axed not aksed:)

[GOPJ]

And he wrote ‘Dreams’ a very few short years later? Yeah, right.

[LibertyRocks]

It’s also one of the FIRST, and EASIEST of mistakes that someone should be able to catch on a cursory overview of their own writing! The fact that the mistake is made numerous times through the course of the correspondence and was never corrected says many things about Obama. Mainly, that he didn’t even bother to proofread it.

I’m not perfect, and I don’t expect anyone else to be either. However, if you are sitting on the HARVARD Law Review Board and you can’t even get your noun-verb agreement correct when writing what is supposedly a very important letter then you really have no business even being AT Harvard - much less serving as the head of a legal publication!

[Still Thinking]

Ping to your interest (and Presidential in this case, no less)

[Tax-chick]

I saw this yesterday. It’s so surprise that we’re getting such disastrous from such an appallingly ignorant person.