From: Fran B.
Sent: June 14, 2012
To: undisclosed recipients
Subject: Fw: Obama's Literary Agent in 1991 Booklet: 'Born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii'
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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.
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.
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.
***
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."
The booklet, which was distributed to "business colleagues" in the publishing industry, includes a brief biography of Obama among the biographies of eighty-nine other authors represented by Acton & Dystel.
It also promotes Obama's anticipated first book, Journeys in Black and White--which Obama abandoned, later publishing Dreams from My Father instead.
Obama’s biography in the booklet is as follows (image and text below):
Barack Obama, the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii. The son of an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister, he attended Columbia University and worked as a financial journalist and editor for Business International Corporation. He served as project coordinator in Harlem for the New York Public Interest Research Group, and was Executive Director of the Developing Communities Project in Chicago’s South Side. His commitment to social and racial issues will be evident in his first book, Journeys in Black and White.
The booklet, which is thirty-six pages long, is printed in blue ink (and, on the cover, silver/grey ink), using offset lithography. It purports to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of Acton & Dystel, which was founded in 1976.
Front cover (outside) - note Barack Obama listed in alphabetical order
Front cover (inside)
Jay Acton no longer represents Obama. However, Jane Dystel still lists Obama as a client on her agency's website.
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.
The design of the booklet was undertaken by Richard Bellsey, who has since closed his business. Bellsey, reached by telephone, could not recall the exact details of the booklet, but told Breitbart News that it "sounds like one of our jobs, like I did for [Acton & Dystel] twenty years ago or more."
The parade of authors alongside Obama in the booklet includes politicians, such as former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill; sports legends, such as Joe Montana and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar; and numerous Hollywood celebrities.
The reverse side of the page that features Barack Obama includes former Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader and early-1990s "boy band" pop sensation New Kids On the Block.
Acton, who spoke to Breitbart News by telephone, confirmed precise details of the booklet and said that it cost the agency tens of thousands of dollars to produce.
He indicated that while "almost nobody" wrote his or her own biography, the non-athletes in the booklet, whom "the agents deal[t] with on a daily basis," were "probably" approached to approve the text as presented.
Dystel did not respond to numerous requests for comment, via email and telephone. Her assistant told Breitbart News that Dystel "does not answer questions about Obama."
The errant Obama biography in the Acton & Dystel booklet does not contradict the authenticity of Obama's birth certificate. Moreover, several contemporaneous accounts of Obama’s background describe Obama as having been born in Hawaii.
The biography does, however, fit a pattern in which Obama--or the people representing and supporting him--manipulate his public persona.
David Maraniss's forthcoming biography of Obama has reportedly confirmed, for example, that a girlfriend Obama described in Dreams from My Father was, in fact, an amalgam of several separate individuals.
In addition, Obama and his handlers have a history of redefining his identity when expedient. In March 2008, for example, he famously declared: "I can no more disown [Jeremiah Wright] than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother."
Several weeks later, Obama left Wright's church--and, according to Edward Klein's new biography, The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House, allegedly attempted to persuade Wright not to "do any more public speaking until after the November [2008] election" (51).
Obama has been known frequently to fictionalize aspects of his own life. During his 2008 campaign, for instance, Obama claimed that his dying mother had fought with insurance companies over coverage for her cancer treatments.
That turned out to be untrue, but Obama has repeated the story--which even the Washington Post called "misleading"--in a campaign video for the 2012 election.
The Acton & Dystel biography could also reflect how Obama was seen by his associates, or transitions in his own identity. He is said, for instance, to have cultivated an "international" identity until well into his adulthood, according to Maraniss.
Regardless of the reason for Obama's odd biography, the Acton & Dystel booklet raises new questions as part of ongoing efforts to understand Barack Obama--who, despite four years in office remains a mystery to many Americans, thanks to the mainstream media.
Larry O'Connor contributed to this report.
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Comments
Whow! Obama used a composite character to represent his girlfriends instead of listing them all and giving their names and addresses. How shocking!
ReplyDeleteThe fact that a blurb for Obama's literary agent got Obama's place of birth wrong does not show that Obama wrote it (he didn't), nor of course does it show that Obama really was born in Kenya--which would be an incredible tale since only 21 people came to the USA from Kenya in 1961. Obama's publicist simply got it wrong, probably by reading off of the biography of Obama's father, who actually WAS born in Kenya.
Why should anyone respond to birther media when they so very often deliberately misquote and deliberately get the facts wrong?
For example the story that Abercrombie had said that he could not find Obama's birth certificate or that it was not in the files. That was made up. He never said it.
(And three Republican and several Democrat officials have said and stated on official forms that Obama's birth certificate does exist and that it is in the files and that the facts on it are exactly the same as on the one that the White House has published). And these confirmations are confirmed further by the INDEX Data (a public file showing the birth certificates on file, which shows one for Obama) and by the birth notices in the Health Bureau Records section of the Hawaii newspapers in 1961).
Other mis-statements and mis-reporting: "Obama's Kenyan grandmother said he was born in Kenya." No, she never said any such thing. The full tape shows that she said repeatedly that he was born in Hawaii, and in another interview (Hartford Courant), she said that the first that her family in Kenya had heard of Obama's birth was in a letter from Hawaii.
Still others: "Obama's lawyer said that the birth certificate was forged." No, she never said any such thing.
The booklet was a mistake, and apparently it was not noticed for years, but that certainly is not proof that Obama was born in Kenya.
ReplyDeleteA mistake? Yes, that is what the guy who wrote the blurb has admitted. Apparently he got the idea from a bio of Obama's father, who actually was born in Kenya.
In any case, Obama was born in Hawaii, as his birth certificate and the repeated confirmation of the officials there and the Index Data and the birth notices in the Hawaii newspapers all show.
Only 21 people came to the USA from Kenya in 1961 according to INS records. There is an infinitesimal chance that Obama and his mother were two of them, considering the distance and the expense (the parents were not rich by any means).