DIANA WEST: THE MEDIA DOTH PROTEST TOO MUCH
http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2125/Great-Get-But-Breitbart-Doth-Protest-Too-Much.aspx
Don’t get me wrong — kudos to Breitbart for publishing its report on a 1991 promotional booklet from a literary agency that describes client Barack Obama as “born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii,” emphasis on “born in Kenya.” But what a strange apologetic the Breitbart team has produced in presenting this hot story.
The story, now the lead report at Drudge, opens with an explanatory note, kind of an how-to-read-this-story guide which is almost as notable as the story itself.
Thus:
Note from Senior Management:
Andrew Breitbart was never a “Birther,” and Breitbart News is a site that has never advocated the narrative of “Birtherism.” In fact, Andrew believed, as we do, that President Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 4, 1961.
Why is this necessary? What is “Birtherism” anyway? It seems clear that Breitbart News believes it is about to commit heresy by reporting a new set of facts that contradicts the agreed-upon narrative. They are about to say something they believe they shouldn’t. They are about to report a fact about a document that has emerged which directly contradicts the president’s, the media’s, the elite’s, narrative, and they are offering a pre-emptive mea culpa for their sin against the mainstream. This is indicative of the struggle within — the Breitbart people want to be journalists, but they have so dutifully observed the restrictions of that Narrative of Authority and for so long that it hurts to color outside the lines.
Yet Andrew also believed that the complicit mainstream media had refused to examine President Obama’s ideological past, or the carefully crafted persona he and his advisers had constructed for him.
It is for that reason that we launched “The Vetting,” an ongoing series in which we explore the ideological background of President Obama (and other presidential candidates)–not to re-litigate 2008, but because ideas and actions have consequences.
It is also in that spirit that we discovered, and now present, the booklet described below–one that includes a marketing pitch for a forthcoming book by a then-young, otherwise unknown former president of the Harvard Law Review.
In other words, there we were, just doing our job, minding our own ideologically-related beat, when, bam, this document dropped on our heads. What could we do, folks? Well, they could have ignored it, so, again, kudos to the Breitbart organization.
This next comment isn’t worthy of them, however.
It is evidence–not of the President’s foreign origin, but that Barack Obama’s public persona has perhaps been presented differently at different times.
Slippery talk. The document is what it is. It might be evidence of the President’s foreign origin, or it might be evidence of a PR person’s idea of selling his client, or it might be evidence of Obama’s youthful fantasy, or it might be evidence of a mistaken reading of his CV. It is what it is. But we don’t know what it is not.
Now the story proper begins:
Breitbart News has obtained a promotional booklet produced in 1991 by Barack Obama’s then-literary agency, Acton & Dystel, which touts Obama as “born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.”
It goes from there, describing the booklet. Then:
According to the booklet itself, the text was edited by Miriam Goderich, who has since become Dystel’s partner at Dystel & Goderich, an agency founded in 1994. Breitbart News attempted to reach Goderich by telephone several times over several days. Her calls are screened by an automated service that requires callers to state their name and company, which we did. She never answered. …
More story. Then:
The errant Obama biography in the Acton & Dystel booklet does not contradict the authenticity of Obama’s birth certificate.
Errant? I suppose they mean earrant “errant” as in deviating, not roving (as to Kenya). But what do they mean “does not contradict the authenticity of Obama’s birth certificate”? Do they mean that a PR handout apparently created in 1991 is less authentic than the online computer imagery we know and love? How do they know that? We would have to compare the documents side by side to determine that.
Moreover, several contemporaneous accounts of Obama’s background describe Obama as having been born in Hawaii.
What contemporaneous accounts? Tthe contemporaneous newspaper announcements of Obama’s birth? Arpaio posse lead investigator Mike Zullo reveals that these are meaningless as markers because the posse discovered that these same newspapers printed Hawaiian “birth” announcements of adopted toddlers and even foreign babies.
The biography does, however, fit a pattern in which Obama–or the people representing and supporting him–manipulate his public persona.
“Manipulate his publlic persona” — a fancy phrase. The crux of this story is much, much simpler. It may not be conclusive, but this 1991 agency ad copy Breitbart has presented us with appears to be another piece of evidence that Obama a fraud who must be investigated — by Congress, by a special prosecutor — to determine whether he is eligible to run for re-election this November. If he is, fine. If he is not, he is a fraud who should be prosecuted, along with those who participated in the cover-up.
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