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May 10, 2011

How the Media Falsify Obama's Origins Story

By Jack Cashill
In her new biography of Ann Dunham, A Singular Woman, New York Times reporter Janny Scott corrupts Barack Obama's nativity story even more than a cynic might have thought possible.  In so doing, Scott follows an ignoble media tradition that deserves exposure as does the story that it corrupts.

At the very first moment of his national acclaim, the 2004 keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention, Barack Obama established the foundational myth of his political ascendancy.

Obama's father, Barack Obama Sr., had grown up in Kenya "herding goats."  His mother, Ann Dunham, Obama traced to Kansas, as he always did.  "My parents shared not only an improbable love," Obama continued, "they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation." 

In the frequent retelling of this tale, Obama Sr. left the family for Harvard well after the family had cohered.  "I get it," Obama told America's schoolchildren in 2009.  "I know what that's like.  My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother."

For the first five years of his national celebrity, the major media accepted the story as told.  This included the four book-length biographies I consulted when researching my book Deconstructing Obama and any number of long-form articles.

Even before the 2008 election, however, the alternative conservative media began catching on that the story was false.  How false would become increasingly clear.  

 

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