Never let it be said the New York Times is afraid to tackle an unflattering story about President Obama, even if it’s often a delayed reaction. The paper’s political blog The Caucus deigned to notice today that the new biography of the president by David Maraniss uncovered the fact that much of Dreams From My Father, the highly praised Barack Obama autobiography, is either fabricated or exaggerated. The Times’s Michael Shear opines that having its author now sitting in the White House has brought Dreams more scrutiny than its author could have envisioned when he wrote it in 1995. But the problem with contemporary analyses of the questionable personal history in the book is not so much the peril associated with being a famous political author but whether the book provides proof of a pattern of falsehoods and distortions about his past that has been one of the hallmarks of the president’s public career.
The answer to that question is contained near the bottom of the piece in which Shear lets drop that proof of such a pattern was already provided by his own newspaper last year. Though the Times buried the story when it broke and then never followed up or editorialized on the scandal, it was their own reporter Janny Scott whose research on the life of the president’s mother Ann Dunham revealed that the oft-told story of her dying because of the failure of her health insurance company to pay for her cancer treatment was a flat out lie. But while Shear is right that this year’s election will not turn on how Maraniss’s book is received, the unwillingness of the Times and other mainstream publications to call out Obama for writing fiction and calling it autobiography gives us a good indication of how much of an advantage having a quiescent media is for an incumbent president.
The fables Obama seems to have told about his alienation, his girlfriends and the rest of his over-intellectualized voyage of self-discovery actually pale in comparison to the whopper he told when running for election in 2008 that his mother died because she had been denied coverage and treatment of her disease. Scott revealed that in fact the expenses relating to her cancer had been paid by her insurance. Though she had a separate and totally unrelated dispute relating to disability coverage, Scott’s research proved that Obama’s statement during the 2008 presidential debate was fiction:
For my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they’re saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don’t have to pay her treatment, there’s something fundamentally wrong about that.
It bears repeating that the president knew this account was false because he served as his mother’s attorney in all her dealings with the insurance company.
When the Times ran that story (on page 14 rather than on the front page), the White House chose not to deny the truth of Scott’s reporting. But that didn’t stop the Obama campaign from refloating the same falsehoods about Ms. Dunham having perished for lack of insurance coverage in an autobiographical campaign film narrated by Tom Hanks. Not only has the president never apologized for lying to the American people about his mother’s plight, he rightly assumed that even though the truth was uncovered by the New York Times, neither that paper nor the rest of the mainstream media would follow up on it as they undoubtedly would had a Republican ever tried to sell the voters such a transparent whopper.
It may be as Shear writes, that as a result of Maraniss’s work, Obama may face more questions about his “personal narrative” than he did four years ago. But the proof of his willingness to tell a lie — even one about his late mother — about his past in order to score political points has already been well established. Most Americans don’t care about the president’s old girlfriends or place much importance about the proper sequence of events in his life. Nor should they. But the myth he wove about Ann Dunham’s death is the sort of damning falsehood for which he still deserves to be held accountable. That he won’t be is a much bigger story than anything uncovered by Maraniss.
Obama did not say that his mother died because of what the insurance company did, at least not in the quote you give. You are distorting his words.
You are right, that quote does not show that Obama lied with his account that had her "dying because of the failure of her health insurance company to pay for her cancer treatment." But how about "arguing with insurance companies because they’re saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don’t have to pay her treatment," truthful? Did the health insuror (not the disability insuror) contend that "they (didn't) have to pay her treatment" because her cancer may have been "a pre-existing condition"? hat seems not to have been the case. So what is that about not "hav(ing) to pay her treatment" other than 100% untruthful?
There's no distortion – Obama told a flat out lie. And he told a series of fabrications in his books. You think that if he was a Republican this would have been front page news? Why the double standard? How do you respond to the fact that he claimed things that never happened? That he told stories about his family that were simply made up? This is something unprecedented.
If democrats didn't have double standards they wouldn't have any standards at all.
True, Obama did not say that his mother died because "of what the insurance company did" (has anyone ever made such a claim?). He only suggested that she died because of what the company did not do. His argument was clintonian and so is yours.
Let's be fair. If anybody has problems with Obama's autobiographical narrative shouldn't they take them up with Bill Ayers, who actually wrote the stuff?
What??? ANOTHER Democrat president who is a serial liar? Geeeez. What is it with these people? n nClinton was a convicted liar (perjurer). Al Gore couldn't stop lying about things that he didn't even have to bother lying about. He couldn't control himself. Jon Edwards was the same lying sack of suds. And now El Presdente? n nI'm thinking this is no accident. This is part of the Democrat Election Manual.
Don't forget John Kerry lying about his military service. Oh, and he also lied when he said he would pay the taxes on his new yacht.
After the 2004 election, John Kerry promised to release the complete medical records from his naval service, to refute the claims made by his fellow Swift Boat crewmen. n nMore than seven years later, we're still waiting to see those records. n
This is laughable. Surely you aren't implying that the Republicans don't lie. Bush lied about WMDs, Daddy bush about no new taxes, I can't even begin to count Romney's lies.
Begin, please. n nBush didn't try to deceive about WMD, he was given information by intelligence that he trusted, unlike Clinton or Obama that tell purposeful lies.
you'll find Obama never lies.In Each one of his untruths he 'misspoke'. Only Republicans can lie apparently at least by the liberal media "standards".
so, the book is not up for a fiction award?
Don't worry, friends. In exactly seven months our long national nightmare will be over. n n(A little Watergate-lingo for you all, on the 40th anniversary of what became the anti-Nixon coup.) n nObama will move on to be President of the United States of Europe, where a few years after his ascension his Muslim background will come in very handy for that continent's new rulers. n nAnd remember – "Elect no Democrat anywhere, ever."
I think that's what he wants and has aspired to … being "King of the World", but because he has been driving our Titanic country so quickly towards the iceberg, these European countries see him as a weak leader and alas, that dream of Malia's father will not come to pass.
From Tobin's "was a flat out lie" link: "While her battle for disability coverage probably was stressful, that has nothing to do with her son’s subsequent efforts to impose a government health care plan on the nation." n nSupposition built on supposition. So, who's the liar here? Tobin has built a strawman of Obama's mendacity on which to base his attack on universal healthcare. But hey, let's forget about the mendacity that launched a fraudulent war that killed thousands of Americans, or the mendacity that has the perpetrators of the worst crash since the Depression (for which they were also the perps) blaming the Democrats and insisting the foxes be rehired to guard the henhouse. But of course, all that pales in comparison to a passage about Obama's mother in a book, that Tobin uses as a fig leaf to obscure the criminal obstructionism of the GOP to the universal healthcare which is a given in every other civilized country in the world. Did I say every other civilized country? Oh, I forget, with a Republican party so far beyond the pale of decency and every base interest in the nation mobilized behind them, we certainly can't call ourselves civilized! n
Typical – change the subject – stick to it and respond to the fact that Obama put in outright lies in his books about himself. Don't talk about something else – politicians do that.. Respond to the article, not some off the topic diatribe, which is going to convince no one. n n
As Mary McCarthy said of Lillian Hellman, every word out of Obama's mouth is a lie, including "and" and "the."
The media should be held accountable for believing the fiction that Obama wrote (or possibly ghost written by his radical friend Bill Ayres), and then foisting this fraud, charlatan and poseur onto the American electorate. This administration is filled with very questionable types such as Holder, Geithner, Spouse, Chu, et alia, who are bent on pursuing their radical ideologies. These radicals are enervating the economy and the American can-do zeitgeist. The media cannot bring themselves to question this man and his apparatchiks. Hope we can survive all the obfuscations and prévarications!
You are wrong, Jonathan S. Tobin. President Obama's book, Dreams From My Father is not fiction. Barack is like a God, you know it and I know it, therefore it should be classified as mythology.
It is not true that Barack Obama is a messiah, a latter-day Jesus Christ. n nThe only thing Obama has in common with Jesus is the same middle initial. n
One thing above all else that I have learned about pathological liars- they are always weirdly confident they can't get caught. Also, when caught, they never acknowledge it. I am starting to think they believe the lies at some level.
Obama is a "God", it's not fiction, it's not lies, its Mythology!
Those who blindly follow the messiah will not care. They will make all necessary excuses and stretch the facts as needed. Intellectually corrupt. That great god of transparency, hope and change has delivered his message in real time. He has no credibility, he is simply one more lying, self-serving, arrogant politician.
Latinos should not be so enamored about the Obama administration who wanted Latinos killed with their guns in Mexico by drug cartels in order to trace the guns! n nLatinos, wake up! This man is not on your side. He's a user and only wants your votes but does not have your heart.
The real issue here is the failure of major media – ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, PBS, most newspapers to even mention this. At a time when a major news media had to invent a gaffe, the fact that major media has not even mentioned the discovery of outright lies in a book by Obama is incredible. n nThere's not a double standard, there's major media out to elect the Democrat and to use omissions, prevarications and more in order to do so. All else here pales by comparison. n n"I don't have to be popular, I just have to be less unpopular than the other guy" Obama in 2011 n
In a similar vein, vote James Frey for President in 2020!
I guess he did learn something at law school. Too bad he skipped economics.
Typical Obama. Willing to exploit any woman for any thing. He threw his own grandmother under the bus, too.
Typical Obama. Willing to exploit any woman for any thing. He threw his own grandmother under the bus, for heaven's sake.
Many of us have been saying he's a fraud for a very very long time.
The contempt which Obama holds for Americans is unfathomable. For him to present this ghost-written pack of lies by a terrorist bomber as an autobiography reveals just how gullible and credulous he believes us to be. And by "us", more particularly his own supporters, since most of Obama's non-supporters recognized it as trash and did not waste time reading it. So there you have it, Obamunists, your Messiah thinks you're a bunch of knuckle-draggers.
Small and Innocent? lies when applying for the job/office in the world with powers to CHANGE the entire world. With no apparent concern, as are most of us at the possibility our "letters of reference" might, just might, be investigated before the job is offered? An unusual casualness. n nThen when the job attained ALL documents SEALED under Executive Order to assure their secrecy "in perpetuity". n nWhy so little linterest ,from the influence media print and TV and "imvestigative journalists"? As for example past and present history for Sarah Palin., Before her at this 40th anniversary of Watergate Richard Nixon. n n Could such uninterest in the media/punditry be construed by reasonable people as "Cover-up"? If so, of what ? For what reason/reasons?
The story about his mother is like the ones about his ficticious friends. Both exist only to further his agenda and make a better story.