On Thursday, Breitbart reported that Acton & Dystel, Obama’s former publishing agency, published a booklet in 1991 with a bio saying the President “was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.”
The relevant portion of the booklet follows:
(More at Examiner)
Later in the day, Miriam Goderich, the woman who edited the text, issued a statement to Political Wire, one of her clients, saying:
“You’re undoubtedly aware of the brouhaha stirred up by Breitbart about the erroneous statement in a client list Acton & Dystel published in 1991 (for circulation within the publishing industry only) that Barack Obama was born in Kenya. This was nothing more than a fact checking error by me — an agency assistant at the time. There was never any information given to us by Obama in any of his correspondence or other communications suggesting in any way that he was born in Kenya and not Hawaii. I hope you can communicate to your readers that this was a simple mistake and nothing more.”
A simple mistake – that managed to survive “at least three different versions of Jane Dystel’s website, and through at least four different versions of Obama’s biography,” Breitbart added.
The bio remained on the site for 16 years, and was not changed until two months after Obama announced his run for the White House in 2007.
But, we’re supposed to think it’s just a “fact-checking error.”
Is it proof that Obama was born in Kenya? Not really, but as Breitbart said, it “fit[s] a pattern in which Obama–or the people representing and supporting him–manipulate his public persona.”
And for those who think Breitbart.com is a site that advances the so-called “birther narrative, the senior management posted this at the top of the article:
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.
