Back at the beginning of March, Barack Obama told a crowd in Selma that the 1965 March on Selma resulted in his conception. The media couldn't do simple math and determine that Obama was born in 1961, not 1965. Obama also tried to assert that the Kennedy administration was responsible for his father's arrival in America, although his conception predates Kennedy's oath of office. The Washington Post's Michael Dobbs looks into the Obama/Kennedy myth and explores his historical revisionism:
Addressing civil rights activists in Selma, Ala., a year ago, Sen. Barack Obama traced his “very existence” to the generosity of the Kennedy family, which he said paid for his Kenyan father to travel to America on a student scholarship and thus meet his Kansan mother.
The Camelot connection has become part of the mythology surrounding Obama’s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. After Caroline Kennedy endorsed his candidacy in January, Newsweek commentator Jonathan Alter reported that she had been struck by the extraordinary way in which “history replays itself” and by how “two generations of two families — separated by distance, culture and wealth — can intersect in strange and wonderful ways.”
It is a touching story — but the key details are either untrue or grossly oversimplified.
Contrary to Obama’s claims in speeches in January at American University and in Selma last year, the Kennedy family did not provide the funding for a September 1959 airlift of 81 Kenyan students to the United States that included Obama’s father. According to historical records and interviews with participants, the Kennedys were first approached for support for the program nearly a year later, in July 1960. The family responded with a $100,000 donation, most of which went to pay for a second airlift in September 1960.
Be sure to read the whole thing. Like Hillary Clinton, Obama is toying with his life story to transform himself to whatever his audience wants to see. As the post-racial candidate, he downplays race. In Chicago, he rubs elbows with radicals like Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers. For the Democrats longing for JFK, he falsely ties himself to the Kennedys. For those seeking a candidate with civil rights credentials, he tries to draw a connection with Selma. Like Hillary Clinton's bogus stories, Barack Obama is a fraud. Had the mainstream media done the math when they covered his Selma speech in 2007, this would be common knowledge.
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