Why it matters that Obama dated a composite and ate a dog

(London) Telegraph ^ | May 2, 2012 | Tim Stanley

[Zakeet]

There was a brief media firestorm yesterday when Vanity Fair broke the news that Obama’s famous “New York girlfriend” was a fiction. She appears in his 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father, described in some detail by her appearance, voice and mannerisms. But a new biography of Obama – with an excerpt published in Vanity Fair – “reveals” that she was actually an amalgam of several different women. Politico immediately ran with “Obama: 'New York girlfriend' was composite” and Drudge headlined with “Obama Admits Fabricating Girlfriend in a Memoir.” Coming hot on the heels of the news that the Pres once ate a dog, his weirdo factor seems to have hit the roof.

Actually, it turns out that Obama always said that his New York squeeze was a fake. Within a couple of hours of the story breaking, journalists pointed out that at the beginning of Dreams From My Father it reads, “For the sake of compression, some of the characters that appear are composites of people, I’ve known, and some events appear out of precise chronology.” Politico was forced to print a humiliating correction and David Graham of The Atlantic went in for the kill: “Politico has served as an unwitting pawn in a game conservative spinmeisters are playing to redefine Obama between now and November … It's much the same as the flap over Obama eating dog, in which a different piece of Dreams From My Father, in which he describes eating canine meat as a boy in Indonesia, was rediscovered. While conservative activists and journalists present these stories while claiming that Obama wasn't properly vetted four years ago, what's actually happening is they're reintroducing facts to the record, this time with a far more negative spin.”

[CaptainK]

I'd be much more interested in reading what they have to say about Obama

[billhilly]

I’m surprised his ‘girlfriend’ wasn’t inflatable.

Even he wouldn’t have enough wind to inflate both a doll and his ego.

[FreeAtlanta]

[FreeAtlanta]

[FreeAtlanta]