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Jewish World Review June 22, 2012/ 2 Tamuz, 5772 Obama's truthiness By Jonah Goldberg
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | It's becoming increasingly clear that President Obama is not burdened with too heavy a commitment to honesty. This is hardly a shock about any politician, but revelations of dishonesty hurt some more than others. Announce that But Obama was supposed to be different. He was a "lightworker," an ocean tamer and cynicism slayer. In short, he was supposed to be too good to be true -- and it turns out he was. That's one obvious conclusion to be drawn from the all-too-delayed vetting of the president's biography, most notably in Obama has been less than honest about many things. Some of his biggest distortions should be the subject of sustained soul searching on the part of the media. For instance, as In the spirit of charity, some of the lies can be chalked up, at least in part, to fanciful family narratives. Obama claims his maternal grandfather fought in Patton's army and liberated Nazi death camps. He says his paternal grandfather was tortured by the British imperialists in What I find more interesting are the lies Obama tells not so much about himself, but about society. In "Dreams from My Father," Obama tells readers that he struggled with racism and racial alienation all his life. He wasn't a starter on his high school basketball team because he played "black" while his coach coached "white." He confabulated a black friend in high school who, like himself, was shunned for racial reasons. He wrote of a "big fight" with a white ex-girlfriend who, after seeing a racially charged play, "started talking about why black people were so angry all the time." As Maraniss methodically shows, these and other tales of racial woe were false. His coach didn't start him because he wasn't good enough to start. His friend in high school was half-Japanese, not black, and neither of them were racially ostracized. The girlfriend, The Barack Obama who wrote "Dreams From My Father" probably never dreamed of becoming president of No doubt Obama experienced racial animosity in his life, but not enough to fill a memoir with true examples. No doubt life had been unfair to him, but not so unfair as to keep him from The lies, the self-made myths and the whole gestalt of the Obama story as told by Obama and his fans boil down to a man who has struggled with adversity and proven himself better than the society that spawned him. In effect, we don't deserve Barack Obama. Perhaps this helps explain why One pattern holds from beginning to end of the tale: When things go wrong for the young Barack, the truth must be bent to show that it's somebody else's fault.
© 2006 TMS |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||||
