May 01 2008
Dreams From My Father, A Forgery.
As I stated in Obama, A Dream Come True, Axelrod has been combing through Barack Obama’s biography for 15 years looking for politically savory bits.
2008 - 15 = 1993. Combing for Two Years Prior to Dreams From My Father was published. When the book was published in 1995, prior to Obama’s run for the Illinois Senate, it sold so poorly, it had to be remaindered.
The version we all read now, is the one republished (?) during Obama’s Run for the US Senate. We all assume the two versions are the same, but I have heard no one verifying this. And why would anyone bother?
Why?
I invite readers to read the following passage, found on page 96 of my digital version, and tell me
if it stimulates wonder. Do you really imagine this being present in the 1995 version?
I N 1983, I DECIDED to become a community organizer. There wasn’t much detail to the idea; I didn’t know anyone making a living that way. When classmates in college asked me just what it was that a community organizer did, I couldn’t answer them directly. Instead, I’d pronounce on the need for change. Change in the White House, where Reagan and his minions were carrying on their dirty deeds. Change in the Congress, compliant and corrupt. Change in the mood of the country, manic and self-absorbed. Change won’t come from the top, I would say. Change will come from a mobilized grass roots.
That’s what I’ll do, I’ll organize black folks. At the grass roots. For change.
or this passage?
In the sit-ins, the marches, the jailhouse songs, I saw the African-American community becoming more than just the place where you’d been born or the house where you’d been raised. Through organizing, through shared sacrifice, membership had been earned. And because membership was earned-because this community I imagined was still in the making, built on the promise that the larger American community, black, white, and brown, could somehow redefine itself-I believed that it might, over time, admit the uniqueness of my own life. That was my idea of organizing. It was a promise of redemption. And so, in the months leading up to graduation, I wrote to every civil rights organization I could think of, to any black elected official in the country with a progressive agenda, to neighborhood councils and tenant rights groups.
I have some observations about these quotes, of bearing on the authenticity of the content of Dreams From My Father.
***
While the Book eventually became a best seller, I strongly believe, 90% of its readers, never finish reading it. It is simply mentally too demanding. If you do read it, there is little you will be able to say, about who Obama identifies himself as.
Obama’s book is 70 % about being Black, and offers very bitter observations about America and the World. Yet, there is a consistent, mechanical, and very artificial ambiguity, about Obama’s own position on fundamental issues of American Race Relations, about Trinity Church, about Black Anger, and Racism, not to mention Obama’s own identity. This ambiguity, makes digesting the book, an irritating and unpleasant task. It would explain why there is so little substantive commentary made about it.
The book’s ambiguity is so consistent, it simply defies all literary explanations! I believe, it can only be explained through an Axelrodian political intervention!
The question being, who wrote Obama’s book, and in what Year? We need to compare the Remaindered Version, with the 2004.
We all know Audacity of Hope is a Hopeless Political Hackjob, but is it possible, that Dreams are an Even bigger one?
Just take a look at the ambiguity in the following - seemingly crucial- passage:
I had stopped listening at a certain point, I now realized, so wrapped up had I been in my own perceived injuries, so eager was I to escape the imagined traps that white authority had set for me. To that white world, I had been willing to cede the values of my childhood, as if those values were somehow irreversibly soiled by the endless falsehoods that white spoke about black. [82]
Except now I was hearing the same thing from black people I respected, people with more excuses for bitterness than I might ever claim for myself. Who told you that being honest was a white thing? they asked me. Who sold you this bill of goods, that your situation exempted you from being thoughtful or diligent or kind, or that morality had a color? You’ve lost your way, brother. Your ideas about yourself-about who you are and who you might become-have grown stunted and narrow and small. [82]
Now when you read these words, I think you will either not understand them, and have to re-read them, or depending on your race, project two different interpretations into them.
Odd, isn’t it? Well, its like this at every single turn when Obama touches upon his own inner convictions! They are always presented either illegibly, or as cold-hard observations, with Obama totally Personally Absent!
It is weird. I cannot believe this book was penned by Obama, or that the 2004 editions are the same as the 1995 edition. Impossible!
If I were wrong, which I don’t believe I am, this would imply that Obama has considered himself predestined for a presidency since early childhood, precisely as I stated, but to a megalomaniacal degree, NOBODY could have possibly imagined, and taken seriously!
Either Obama is a TOTAL fabrication, or we are talking Jerusalem Syndrome to the tenth degree! We need people to investigate.
PS1: Again, a great deal Obama’s experience with Discrimination has been disputed by those who knew him throughout life.
PS2 One clear fabrication recently identified, is Obama’s Lie about a Time Life article, which stretches for 2.4 pages in his book, and is a defining moment in his Racial Awakening.
12 responses so far
[…] Read the rest of this great post here […]
I absolutely agree with you. I am a writer, and I knew from reading tiny excerpts from one of those crappy books that the voice was false. The person relaying the experiences was not the one who had them– or the entire thing was manufactured out of thin air. It felt like ghost writing, pure and simple. When you just had the excerpts from the second version, I could not even read the first sentence. It had absolutely no flow.
The 1995 version is written by a writer, not a hack, and certainly not Obama. It has flow and intelligence. However, it also has no soul and is very boring. Like someone writing an insurance report.
All the voices in these books are different. I would hazard a guess that none is Obama’s. If a law review article by him existed, I would like to take a look at that. But as everything else with him, I would assume (1) it doesn’t exist, or (2) it was written by someone else.
You are leaving out the possibility that he was the ghost writer for his own book.
It sounds a lot like what a kid fresh out of a tony University might write if he had to fabricate a life for himself.
A lot of third person type roundabouts because he is not writing himself but writing about himself but not himself. Some one else. The person who he thought he wanted to be. The sales pitch for an election.
[…] podcasts@redstate.com (Redstate Network) wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptAs I stated in Obama, A Dream Come True, Axelrod has been combing through Barack Obama’s biography for 15 years looking for politically savory bits. 2008 - 15 = 1993. Combing for Two Years Prior to Dreams From My Father was published. … Read the rest of this great post here […]
[…] podcasts@redstate.com (Redstate Network) wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptAs I stated in Obama, A Dream Come True, Axelrod has been combing through Barack Obama’s biography for 15 years looking for politically savory bits. 2008 - 15 = 1993. Combing for Two Years Prior to Dreams From My Father was published. … […]
Sheesh. Get a grip. You can find the original version of “Dreams from My Father” in countless places. I know that the University of Chicago has several copies in its library and so does Columbia University, his alma mater. You can even find it on Ebay if you are willing to pay enough. Not to mention, of course, that the publisher certainly has the original book. This is the dumbest conspiracy ever.
Lady, do you know what remaindered means? No one is suggesting the edition is not to be found- what Greg is promoting is that you compare the passages between that edition, and the 2004. We are just curious, if you will find the above quotes.
Aint no conspiracy here. Just reasonable questions. Maybe you should read the book, before getting exited?
Just one of many reasons not to vote for this flaming liberal, voted the most liberal liberals of all liberals. Maybe he will get the Ted Kennedy award. Stay away from the bridges, Barack!!!
http://www.dontvoteobama.net
PS-Lets investigate the Larry Sinclair story, thats the GOOD ONE!
Dreams From My Father, A Forgery….
Obama is right. HRC and McCain? Well. As Professor Mankiw reports:. Yesterday I was on the NewsHour to talk about the gas tax holiday. I asked if there was another guest and the producer said, “We tried, but we couldn’t find anyone to ……
Awk! I’m an editor by trade and my red pen would be all over this stuff…why can’t he just put a readable sentence together? Why do we have to continually go back and reread to figure out what he’s trying to say? This guy went to Harvard? He made Law Review?
I don’t know what the reviews said but mine would have proclaimed “A plodding, difficult tread… excruciatingly self indulgent.”
As a world traveler and World Geography teacher, I would say his description of Kenyan society rings authentic but only superficial depth and insights (soul) are shown; nevertheless, it does follow some of the style precepts suggested by the “New Journalism” preached at me at the Univ. of Iowa, which discouraged the writer from forming conclusions, just reporting intimately on things that happened.
The wife got through it all right, and will be presenting it for an educators’ workshop later in the month. She’s a black Houstonian with a Masters’ in Education; she got through it with no problem after quitting the companion book on Hillary Clinton (”Living History”) at pg. 74. Talk about “plodding!”
What the entire column and subsequent posts miss is a discussion on the primary issue, the one of “identity.” Barack is vague about this as I would expect him to be considering the military brats I’ve known. Children exposed to that many environments and situations often retain a sense of “disconnect”, not all of it having to do with race. Our discussions focused on our interracial experiences–some negative, most neutral–and found no reason to dismiss Barack’s self-explorations as invalid or insincere.
“She’s a black Houstonian with a Masters in Education”
Well, gee whiz, golleee, she must be purty smart compared to us inbred uneducated gun toting nobosies that’ll never never vote for BO.