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Maraniss Bio Deepens Obama Birth Mystery
American Thinker
Jack Cashill
6/22/2012
Excerpt:
"David Maraniss has no use for "birthers." In a recent interview, he dismissed their beliefs as "preposterous" and wonders why they cling to them, since "every fact and document leads in another direction."
Yet the one core belief that has united the birther community -- if there be such a thing -- is that Obama dissembled when he talked at both the 2004 and 2008 Democratic Conventions about his parents' "improbable love" and "abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation."
Birthers have known for years that there was no Obama family, that the couple never lived together, that Obama campaigned on a lie, and that the major media covered for him every step of the way. This, ironically, Maraniss confirms in Barack Obama: The Story, a book that has to be parsed as carefully as the Talmud or Finnegan's Wake to be made sense of. Despite his slam on birthers, the facts herein will come as more of a shock to the Obama faithful than to those who have questioned the official birth narrative.
"In the college life of Barack Obama [Senior] in 1961 and 1962," writes Maraniss, "as recounted by his friends and acquaintances in Honolulu, there was no Ann; there was no baby." Although Maraniss talked to many of Obama Sr.'s friends, none of the credible ones ever so much as saw him with Obama's mother, Ann Dunham.
One Obama friend, a Cambodian named Kiri Tith, knew the senior Obama "very well." He had also met Ann through a different channel. "But he had no idea," writes Maraniss, "that Ann knew Obama, let alone got hapai (pregnant) by him, married him, and had a son with him."
Having established the facts, Maraniss turns protective. He refuses to explore the implications of his own reporting. The most consequential is that Obama grounded his 2008 campaign -- his very persona, for that matter -- on a family story that was pure fraud. Lyndon Johnson's masterful biographer, Robert Caro, would never let his subject walk away from such a lie unscathed.
The casual reader of the Maraniss book is left with the impression that Ann and Obama had a one-night stand that they both regretted, but that they consented to marriage because that is what people did back in 1961. The more informed reader wonders whether Barack Obama, Sr. was fronting for the real father, the best candidate being Obama's future mentor, Frank Marshall Davis. Maraniss opens the door on both possibilities but fails to even peek through.
As to the presumed February 1961 wedding, the usually thorough Maraniss offers no detail at all. His endnotes say only this: "Marriage facts recorded in divorce records." To be sure, Ann and Obama claimed a wedding. It suited both their purposes: Obama to extend his visa, and Dunham to legitimize her baby with a black husband.
As to the divorce, Dunham at the time was desperately trying to keep her future husband Lolo Soetoro in the country. The INS believed her to be married to Obama. Even if she were not married, a divorce would have been useful to clear the way for a marriage to Soetoro. Maraniss explains none of this.
Like all other mainstream biographers of the Obama family, Maraniss tells us not a single word about Ann's life in the six months between the February wedding and Obama's August 1961 birth. Given the controversy surrounding Obama's place of birth, Maraniss should have commented on a void of this duration, and he knows it.
Later, when discussing Obama's murky New York years, he opines, "Nothing is so tempting for conspiracy theorists as what appears to be a hole in a life." Maraniss attempts to flesh out the New York years. He makes no effort to fill this critical hole in Ann's life.
On the subject of the birth, the usually voluble Maraniss is as tight-lipped as he is on the wedding. He reports that Obama was born at 7:24 in the evening of August 4, 1961 at Kapi'olani Hospital. As reference, he cites "State of Hawaii Certificate of Live Birth," presumably the unverified document posted online last April."
.....................................
View the complete article at:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/...h_mystery.html
American Thinker
Jack Cashill
6/22/2012
Excerpt:
"David Maraniss has no use for "birthers." In a recent interview, he dismissed their beliefs as "preposterous" and wonders why they cling to them, since "every fact and document leads in another direction."
Yet the one core belief that has united the birther community -- if there be such a thing -- is that Obama dissembled when he talked at both the 2004 and 2008 Democratic Conventions about his parents' "improbable love" and "abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation."
Birthers have known for years that there was no Obama family, that the couple never lived together, that Obama campaigned on a lie, and that the major media covered for him every step of the way. This, ironically, Maraniss confirms in Barack Obama: The Story, a book that has to be parsed as carefully as the Talmud or Finnegan's Wake to be made sense of. Despite his slam on birthers, the facts herein will come as more of a shock to the Obama faithful than to those who have questioned the official birth narrative.
"In the college life of Barack Obama [Senior] in 1961 and 1962," writes Maraniss, "as recounted by his friends and acquaintances in Honolulu, there was no Ann; there was no baby." Although Maraniss talked to many of Obama Sr.'s friends, none of the credible ones ever so much as saw him with Obama's mother, Ann Dunham.
One Obama friend, a Cambodian named Kiri Tith, knew the senior Obama "very well." He had also met Ann through a different channel. "But he had no idea," writes Maraniss, "that Ann knew Obama, let alone got hapai (pregnant) by him, married him, and had a son with him."
Having established the facts, Maraniss turns protective. He refuses to explore the implications of his own reporting. The most consequential is that Obama grounded his 2008 campaign -- his very persona, for that matter -- on a family story that was pure fraud. Lyndon Johnson's masterful biographer, Robert Caro, would never let his subject walk away from such a lie unscathed.
The casual reader of the Maraniss book is left with the impression that Ann and Obama had a one-night stand that they both regretted, but that they consented to marriage because that is what people did back in 1961. The more informed reader wonders whether Barack Obama, Sr. was fronting for the real father, the best candidate being Obama's future mentor, Frank Marshall Davis. Maraniss opens the door on both possibilities but fails to even peek through.
As to the presumed February 1961 wedding, the usually thorough Maraniss offers no detail at all. His endnotes say only this: "Marriage facts recorded in divorce records." To be sure, Ann and Obama claimed a wedding. It suited both their purposes: Obama to extend his visa, and Dunham to legitimize her baby with a black husband.
As to the divorce, Dunham at the time was desperately trying to keep her future husband Lolo Soetoro in the country. The INS believed her to be married to Obama. Even if she were not married, a divorce would have been useful to clear the way for a marriage to Soetoro. Maraniss explains none of this.
Like all other mainstream biographers of the Obama family, Maraniss tells us not a single word about Ann's life in the six months between the February wedding and Obama's August 1961 birth. Given the controversy surrounding Obama's place of birth, Maraniss should have commented on a void of this duration, and he knows it.
Later, when discussing Obama's murky New York years, he opines, "Nothing is so tempting for conspiracy theorists as what appears to be a hole in a life." Maraniss attempts to flesh out the New York years. He makes no effort to fill this critical hole in Ann's life.
On the subject of the birth, the usually voluble Maraniss is as tight-lipped as he is on the wedding. He reports that Obama was born at 7:24 in the evening of August 4, 1961 at Kapi'olani Hospital. As reference, he cites "State of Hawaii Certificate of Live Birth," presumably the unverified document posted online last April."
.....................................
View the complete article at:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/...h_mystery.html