RSS Feed for This PostCurrent Article

Obama Baloney Alert: His Childhood “Racial Awakening” Was Actually A Novel

Anybody who isn’t still swooning over the Incandescent One already knows that Barack Obama’s fictional autobiographical book, Memories I Pulled Out Of My Butt Dreams From My Father contains lies innacurate accounts.

Now we can add yet another Barack Obama Fuzzy Story to the list.

In Dreams, Obama refers to an article in Life Magazine that stimulated a huge revelation and racial-awakening in little Barry at age 9. Obama claimed there was an article in Life Magazine that contained photographs of an “older” “black man,“in dark glasses,” who had “heavy lips” and a “broad, fleshy nose”. The man, according to Obama, had used chemicals to lighten his skin and was looking at himself in a mirror in horror. There was a closeup of the man’s whitened hands, hopelessly scarred by these caustic chemicals of some sort. Barack was presumably aghast and horrified that someone would go to such extremes to turn himself white. Thus, we learned of little Barry’s “racial-awakening”.

There was one problem with Barry’s “Racial-Awakening” story though. The Chicago Tribune couldn’t find a back issue of Life that contained that story. It just plain didn’t exist.. When questioned about it, Barack, being Barack, said, well maybe it wasn’t Life at all. Maybe it was Ebony. There was also no Ebony back issue that contained such a story.

Nice try but no Cigar for Barry.

Author and Poet Robert Bonazzi wrote a biography of the author of a novel entitled, Black Like Me.

When Obama spoke in the Texas Capitol two years ago at the Texas Book Festival, Bonazzi tried but failed to fight through the crowd to give Obama Black Like Me.

The thing is, John Howard Griffin thought of Barry’s “revelation” first in his 1960 novel, Black Like Me.

It appears that Barack, being Barack, merely sponged off of John Howard Griffin’s best seller thirty years after his death. Except he reversed the story.

In the best-seller Black Like Me, the white Mr. Griffin used ultra-violet treatments and photo-sensitizing medication to darken his skin in order to appear as a black man. His intent was to write an account of his experiences as a “black” man in the segregated south. The article that fits Barack’s description appeared in Sepia Magazine. It was a promotional story on Mr. Griffin’s new book, which included a photo of the “black” Mr. Griffin in dark glasses looking in the mirror, as well as a close-up of Griffin’s darkened hands. Presto! Just like Barry’s “revelation” article- in reverse!

Both Time Magazine and Newsweek also carried Sepia’s piece with the accompanying photos, and it is very possible that little Barry read that piece in bound magazine archives at the Embassy in Indonesia (where his mother, who was on ‘food stamps,” worked). Either that, or Barry channeled Griffin. We all know he has messianic powers, so who knows?

It’s more likely that Barack’s Dreams “racial-awakening” experience was the Black Like Me story with the old switcheroo. This makes Barry either a Blowhard or Delusional. You pick.


Black Like Me
sold 11,000,000 copies in 15 languages and is still in print today. It was widely used as High School reading material in the 60s and is still purchased via Mass Media. Richard Widmark played Griffin in the movie Black Like Me.
  • Gerald

    What do you expect from him the truth? Everything about him is a lie or manufactured. His problems with Wright. Ayers, and Rezko is they are real.

  • Troll Drill Thrall

    You are giving perfectly innocent baloney a bad name! Call the cold cuts police!

  • Shainzona

    Was Barry at least correct about what year he was re-awakened?

  • orionATL

    what is emerging in my mind, from this and other similar stories,

    is that barack obama is a person who has been searching for his identity from childhood.

    that may be why he was so devoted to rev wright and his church.

    churches are where one can find black (or white, etc) identity, through association with others of like circumstance.

    there nothing surprising or inappropriate about doing so.

    but that does raise the question, in my mind at least,

    “is this the guy you want in the white house right now”?

    we have already had to wait eight years while george w. bush grew up a tiny bit, a very tiny bit, while president.

  • JoeySky

    BAMBOOZLE.!!!

  • sonia

    https://contribute.hillaryclinton.com/match.html?sc=2440

    PLS DONATE TODAY ALL U CAN

    WE CAN REPORT GOOD NUMBER FOR APRIL

  • beebop

    …that barack obama is a person who has been searching for his identity from childhood …

    there nothing surprising or inappropriate about doing so

    I have a huge problem with Barry finding himself in the present situation to be honest. His chameleon like personna has been little more than a ruse permitting him to be all things to all people and ultimately (as uppity pointed out) nothing to anyone.

    In his recklessness he has damaged careers and reputations of people upon whom he has had no hesitation to project hateful and divisiveness — including racism and specious slurs.

    It’s not like he’s 17 years old … he is after all 46. He’s had amazing educational opportunities and wasted entrees by demonstrating an inability to roll up his sleeves and do any real work for his constituents. He’s intellectually lazy. He takes the short cuts. He evidences no loyalties (to the party, Reverend Wright after 20 years, etc.). He does not think well on his feet and he has no hesitation to lie when it suits him.

    So, no. I am not inclined to dismiss it as “not inappropriate.” He has perpretrated a fraud on the Democratic party. He may be pathological. I don’t know. What I do know that a lot of people have donated a lot of money that could have been better used than to put it into his campaign for what? Hollow hope? No real change change?

    Please …. save me any explantions of Barack!

  • IndayHill

    WAKE-UP, AMERICA!!
    Do you want four more years of DECEPTION,GREED,LIES,FEARS, SPINS,POVERTY, UNCERTAINTIES,UNREST when electing an unknown presidential candidate, Obama? Why hire him, when he has nothing concrete to prove? When we do not him well. There is a name for someone using/stealing someone’s work & use it as his own. He knows that but he does not care. Plagiarist.

  • beebop

    Maybe he was channeling Michael Jackson? ;)

  • BernieO

    If you are waiting for Bush to grow up, even a tiny little bit you will be waiting until hell freezes over. There is no sign that he has matured in the least. His press conference today showed him to be the same immature, obnoxious, smirky smart-alec he has always been.

  • Patrick Henry

    I think thats low grade Baloney..and its all Pork..

  • BernieO

    He’s a real Chauncey Gardener.

  • Troll Drill Thrall

    And the troll conspiracy du jour: It is all that evil baloney’s fault! If it wasn’t in the sandwich poor Oblowhole would not have eaten it!

  • workingclass artist

    Well I think we are gettin closer to solving the mystery as to OBAMA’S SERIOUS CONFLICT WITH HIS INNER CRACKER….Good post uppity….
    I read that book in school and we saw the movie….I remember the movie
    THE WATERMELON MAN……Perhaps that movie lurkes somewhere in Barry’s sub conscious….No ?

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    Well, he said he was 9.

  • Troll Drill Thrall

    Don’t overplay the fear, that is an Obama tactic i.e. fear of riots. But Obama clearly has no business running a country let alone running bath water.

  • Troll Drill Thrall

    I’m waiting for him to get the hell out of the way.

  • workingclass artist

    BINGO…But then again I NEVER EVER and STILL DON’T buy the Granny’s gonna get mugged story….I think he came up with shit to gain street cred.
    How else was he going to find a way to IDENTIFY….It was’nt going to be through actual experience…..Sad in a regular guy….
    DOWN RIGHT OUTRAGEOUS IN A CANDIDATE RUNNING FOR POTUS.

  • Troll Drill Thrall

    You forgot the gratuitous “innner cracker” reference.

  • Shainzona

    Born in 1961 – so he woke up in 1970 or 1971.

    Book published in 1960.

    Hmmmmmm.

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    Well this is a book that was in publication for a long time. It was used in high schools for student reading.

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    Bush is a Manchild. If he hadn’t won the sperm lottery, he would be drinking wine from a box under the tracks.

  • Salida

    I always knew he was all fluff. that is why I’ve never believed he can do a better job than Hill. I stand by her always. Not because she is a woman but because of my niece and nehpew, she has what it takes to provide opportunities for a better tomorrow for them.

    Please contribute to Hillary today.

  • deke

    Wasn’t Obama in Indonesia when he was 9 and if he was how did he get copies of American Magazines.

  • beebop

    deke … you’re looking for logic with Obama? Seriously?

    Lucky for him he picked the Democratic party …

  • Shainzona

    I know – I just wonder if it was still getting any press in 1970-71 when Barry woke up?

    He said he saw an article about some AA…if the publisher was promoting it again then, perhaps he did.

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    According to Griffin’s biographer, the articles also appeared in Newsweek and Time. Bound issues of these magazines are readily available in libraries, and could have been available in the American Embassy libarary where his mother worked in Indonesia. His description of the man and the photo of him in the mirror looking at himself is downright uncanny.

  • workingclass artist

    Ehemmm……I mentioned it earlier up the thread….
    I think he just made up a bunch o shit cause he was writing a book…
    Filler….

  • workingclass artist

    Who are you….Huh ?

  • workingclass artist

    I think he made the whole thing up…..He had the chance to write a book and found a way to use the filler…..This is why under close scrutiny it just does’nt ring TRUE…There are gaps or logically things don’t add up…
    Example: Barry’s mom was on food stamps…But when…where
    Did she get them in Indonesia ?….See what I mean ?

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    Oh yeah, Indonesian food stamps. lol.

  • workingclass artist

    I think it’s more likely he read the book much later in life and invented the story to fill a gap for a book….He could’ve even adopted the story as heard from a friend….Who knows ?
    Like much of Barry it feels contrived…

  • Retired

    When The One tells a falsehood, such becomes truth. Whoa! Obama is The One.

  • alibe

    His mother did not work for the American Embassy.

  • workingclass artist

    I think most likely Barry had an average chilhood that happened to take place in EXOTIC LOCALES AND CIRCUMSTANCES…or
    There’s some really strange shit that went down and this filler is kind mundane cover…
    Either way he just does not RING TRUE and this has as much as anything else to do with Why he has not won over the Working Class.
    Obama does not GET us….and we don’t GET him like he hopes we would.
    It REEKS of a con….

  • http://thedemocraticdaily.com gqmartinez

    I don’t know. I get that Obama is an opportunist. I don’t want to say he “will do anything to win”, but…

  • workingclass artist

    Hmmmmm……..See what I mean ?…..contrived…..

  • Kevin

    So now you’re saying that there was no equivalent for food stamps in indonesia, whether governmental or otherwise at the time? LOL

  • Northwest rain

    Black Like Me — was required reading in many schools.

    I remember reading the book and probably saw the movie.

    I believe that Uppity is correct in her assumption that Obama twisted this book into a black guy using chemicals to alter his appearance rather than the other way around.

    Ironically I have a friend now 80 who did a real Black Like Me tour of the South in the 1940s. Her reason for doing it was because of her career. She joined an “All Girl Jazz Band” — because of her talent with jazz instruments and composition. The band got a contract to play jazz clubs and concerts in the south at both black and white venues. Problem was my friend happened to be white — but using make up and other tricks she could pass as black. The other women talked her into playing along.

    She saw the segregated South — and lived the segregated life. There were several times in either the black or white clubs — had her real racial identity been revealed that she could have been attacked. The other women covered for her — and she for all intents and purposes DID pass as black.

    Our culture has changed so much since the 40s, 50s and 60s — and Obama never really has seen the way it used to be. HE grew up in Hawaii — and to be non white in Hawaii is a PLUS. We do NOT need to return to the past.

    Uppity has a point that Rev. Wright is on the war path — because his message is black power — the crap of the 1960s. MLK was moving us toward peaceful change — and this was just too slow for the militant blacks — like the Black Panthers.

    We don’t need White Separatists and we don’t need Black Separatists. Rev. Wright should be put out of business — the IRS exemption stripped from his racist church.

  • http://www.liberalrapture.com/ John Smart

    from N.C.

    is this illegal? a friend sent me this.

    Here’s the post on a GSO paper for the concert:

    more on Superchunk, Arcade Fire and Obama

    Mac McCaughan of Superchunk and Win Butler of Arcade Fire joined Craig Shirmer, Barack Obama’s NC campaign director, in a conference call this afternoon announcing the details of a concert on May 1 to promote the campaign and one-stop voting.

    The two bands will play in the Greensboro Coliseum parking lot at 1 p.m. on Thursday, May 1. You can get tickets at one-stop voting locations. Shirmer assured us there would be enough to go around.
    “I just celebrated my 28th birthday,” Butler said. “And if you count the Reagan years, when George Bush Sr. was vice president, there’s been a Bush or a Clinton in the White House literally my entire life. I think Obama would bring real change.”
    McCaughan, who also owns Merge Records, talked about Obama’s appeal to the indie rocker.
    “He sponsored a bill to life the ban on low-power radio stations,” he said, “and he supports net neutrality and universal broadband access.”

    Catch is you have to go somewhere in person and check a box that says you have voted or definitely will vote for Obama. One ticket per person.

    HE’S PAYING FOR VOTES.

  • cc

    BO’S CONFLICT WITH HIS INNER CRACKER

    very funny!

  • workingclass artist

    Hmmmm……Now that is interesting…..I believe that this could violate federal election rules……As far as I know you have to go to official polling statons unless you do a mail in vote…..

  • workingclass artist

    Well I was referring to Obama doing a little embellishment to sell a book.
    I’ll bet he wishes he had aited to write those books….

  • Talktruth

    “That was a show of disrespect to me…and my campaign.” Juan Williams, on Greta van Susteran, just rightly pointed out that Barack made this all about him. Not this country, but him. I think Obama is the one they created that saying for: “It’s all about me.”

  • street_parade

    I’ve come to the conclusion that Mr. Obama is running “the long con” where an entirely false world is constructed, the mark is identified and then pulled in with the ultimate goal of stripping the mark of his assets. WE are the mark.

    His racial ‘awakening’? Just more grist for the mill.

  • workingclass artist

    LOL….I’ll bet OPRAH is biting her pillow about now…..

  • workingclass artist

    Yeah….Juan Williams has been a voice of sanity or actual journalism in this thing….I wonder if BABY-O’s minions have threatened his mother yet….

  • Kevin

    In this March 28, 1960 copy of Time Magazine
    http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19600328,00.html

    You’ll find the following article about “Black Like Me”
    http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,826167,00.html

    Since I haven’t read his book, I’m don’t have first hand knowledge of his description of the “awakening”, etc. or more importantly how that particular image/article whatever… sparked it.

    Did he make it up? Nope. Did he misremember it? Clearly… but it’s not like “running from the tarmac under sniper fire” though is it?

  • Talktruth

    Sounds like your friend should write a book – bet it could be a bestseller. I like your writing, Northwest – maybe you could help her.

  • workingclass artist

    Well Kevin your chosen role is to defend Obama…
    SO SHOW ME….

  • http://comcast.net mtunes

    life is hard enough without our memories being examined microscopically for misstatements and errors. To wit, Hillary’s misreported sniper fire. Her first: She was told that the plane (helicopter) was going to land after doing evasive maneuvers to avoid sniper fire. So here she is, accompanied by her only child in what she thought was a dangerous situation. It supposedly turned out not to be. But that does not erase the fact that she experienced the fear that she and Chelsea were for a short while potential sniper targets. It is the fear that was remembered. The details that followed were irrelevant. When she wrote her book, the details of the landing were not recounted with that overlay of fear — but she probably wasn’t exhausted from an endless campaign as she has been of late.

    Now Obama: He recounts an impression from when he was a child. When what he referenced turns out to be difficult to find as a real magazine article, he is chastized as a liar. I really think orionATL identified it accurately when he/she wrote “that barack obama is a person who has been searching for his identity from childhood.” Deliberate lying and having innacurate memories from childhood are two different things. Have you ever revisited the home or school of your youth and been amazed at how it is different than remembered?

    They both need a litle mercy here. Hillary is the better candidate, and she knows who she is. We know who she is and are behind her 100%. We all have to acknowledge that they are both human beings just like all of us — imperfect and fallible, capable of great acts and sometimes small mistakes.

  • street_parade

    You might want to add “The Year of Living Dangerously” to your NetFlix queue. If BO arrived in Indonesia at the age of 6 that would be 1967 — only 2 years after a virtual civil war in Indonesia in which at least 1/2 million people were killed. It was at that time ruled by the brutal Suharto.

    I don’t think food stamps would have been top of Suharto’s government’s list of ‘things to do.’ But then BO’s step-father was an oil company manager — so I don’t think food stamps would have been necessary.

  • Mel

    Has no one figured it out yet?

    Obama’s statement in speeches and I quote for complete accuracy: I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

    It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.

    Remember this from Obama’s attempt on passing off his 20 year association with Wright on the backs of EVERY AMERICAN WHITEY?

    The story that could never be told in any other country on Earth is a simple one, thanks to David Axelrod:

    Obama can lie directly to your face, in his books and during interviews and only in America are there fools enough to buy nto it, threaten of rioting and rebellion based upon a guy who marketed right will lie and lie and lie and the meek will not inherit the earth, the STUPID will blindly!

    People do not seem to get it, this rising so called star is as fake as a $3 bill and to expect change from such a pathalogical liar is a dream he is hoping you will unite around and elect him President to go on and destroy lives on the basis of simple inexperience and emptiness, to the point of being so empty and soul-less he insitills a complete community to invoke rage against a family that has done nothing but good for that community, and during that same time, being a soul-less person to actually inflict old wounds to further his own personal agenda!

    Not only has Obama ruined a great President in causes of most if not all minorities, he has also ruined the asperations and dreams of the Afro-American community in using America’s sin of slavery a month ago to save his own ass, when his DNA isn’t even comprised of such a make up related to slavery, his mother had a preference was for Black men, free and without restrictions and nothing more! Selma wasn’t the cause, only his mothers preference was the creation of Barry Obama!

    And by the way to true single mothers out there, I do hope you can ignore the continual comments in selling Obama’s phoney story of being raised by a single mother, she tired of him at the age of 10 and sent him off to live with her parents, and he had a life then many would envy with private schools and comfortable living, to which his response was to throw them who took him in and cared for him to throw them under the bus, again for selfish gain!

    America has had a quack in office for going on 8 years, it doesn’t need a lost child of his own mind in the White House deciding things that affect everyones daily lives! If so, then Wright is right, GD America!

  • Talktruth

    His commentary lately is such a breath of fresh air…and always devastating to BO. I know they say a lot around here that time is not Barack’s friend – neither is the truth :-J!

  • beebop

    He’d still have Michelle bitching about college loans … so at least there’s that and how the hell could they pay the taxes on the house …. oh, that’s right … there’s a problem with the taxes on the house!

    He’s just a cluster fuck of bad decisions, isn’t he?

  • mimi

    I’m reading Dreams for My Father now. I can barely get through it because something keeps jumping out as explanation of his psyche.

    On the first page he makes a reference about the urban conditions living on East 94th Street and how he didn’t notice because he was busy with his “work” and “unrealized plans.” A sentence or two later he mentions classes, which meant that he was talking about when he was a student at Columbia, living in NYC, not while he was working at the Consultant House for multi national corporations. It really struck me as funny to hear someone refer to their time as a student as work and not one’s studies. Personally, I’ve never heard anyone use the word work in relation to studying even when describing it in the past tense. It’s important distinction because you tend to value your days as a student precisely because it isn’t work as in j-o-b.

    It stood out in a funny way and it made me think about the thread Larry started over a week ago about what do we really know about Obama’s Columbia days?

    And what does unrealized plans mean? As opposed to preoccupation with career goals, which most students are.

    You can’t get far into the book before the spectre of his African father simply dominates his whole way of seeing things. I’m going to be brutally honest: as he describes his grandparents, in particular, he seems to project feelings like being trapped with white people. For me it’s a distinction I recognize as an AA. It’s the sense of alienation. In this case, from a racial perspective. It’s his tone. And no he doesn’t say this with direct words, but he describes them in a too detached manner for a family member. His descriptions are not in a loving way, even as he describes moments when his grandfather carried him on his shoulder and was taking him on ‘adventures’ like fishing. His descriptions of these things are like an outsider.

    I literally just started it, but so far he’s only mentioned his mother in passing. His grandmother too. Certainly this may change, but it was just wierd to me.

    But it’s my understanding that the book is filled with a lot of misrepresentations. But remember, Oprah took great pains in educating the American public via the controversy over the James Frey book about the difference between a memoir as opposed to an autobiography before Obama came into our public scrutiny.

  • Talktruth

    How about this?

    1. Obama claimed credit for nuclear leak legislation that never passed.
    2. Obama misspoke about his being conceived because of Selma.
    3. Sen. Obama took too much credit for his community organizing efforts.
    4. Obama’s assertion that nobody had indications Rezko was engaging in wrongdoing ‘strains credulity.’ ”
    5. Obama was forced to revise his assertion that lobbyists ‘won’t work in my White House.’
    6. ‘Selective, embellished and out-of-context quotes from newspapers pump up Obama’s health plan.’
    7. Sen. Obama said ‘I passed a law that put Illinois on a path to universal coverage,’ but Obama health care legislation merely set up a task force.
    8. ‘Obama…seemed to exaggerate the legislative progress he made’ on ethics reform.
    9. Obama drastically overstated Kansas tornado deaths during campaign appearance.

    http://obamawho.wordpress.com/2008/03/27/remember-obamas-exaggerations-and-misstatements/

  • beebop

    He’s absolutely right. The only thing that the good rev added was dissing Obama and JFK. The rest of it was recycled ….

  • typical.white.person

    Another Obama Flip-Flop:

    Obama lectured us all, over and over and over again about his having the “judgment to lead”.

    Today, Obama admitted his judgment isn’t so good after all:

    The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago. His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate, and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church.

    They certainly don’t portray accurately my values and beliefs. And if Reverend Wright thinks that that’s political posturing, as he put it, then he doesn’t know me very well. And based on his remarks yesterday, well, I might not know him as well as I thought, either.

  • DEM

    When I first read about that ‘memory’ of the scarred-Black-guy (a BAZILLION years ago, it seems!), I immediately thought of Black Like Me. My parents owned a copy of it; it was an important and popular book. However, I quickly dismissed the idea because not only was the plot of Black Like Me opposite of what Obama described, the theme also did not fit with Obama’s description or interpretation.

    But now with this new (confirming) information… I can only shake my head in shock and awe. Leaving aside his inexperience, I don’t want a person with Obama’s socio-cultural and ethical ‘issues’ as the Democratic candidate for President. How is it that he has he persisted so long in this race?

  • workingclass artist

    Gee Wiz that sounds kinda MILLION LITTLE PIECES rationalizations to me.
    What would OPRAH say….Hmmmmm………

  • beebop

    With Obama black truly is white and vice versa. He just is always the victim and it is always his black side that is getting the short end of the stick. Is there not one thing about his white heritage in which he takes any pride? No pride in his mother’s people at all? I believe that it was his father who was already married to someone else and deserted him at a young age. I totally GET that he needs the approval of the parent who deserted him, but isn’t there ever an end to playing this out in public? Give me a White House blow job any time!

  • Talktruth

    Because the MSM is in the bag for Corporate America, and they know that BO will never win the election. So, to maintain their fancy cars and houses and vacations and clothes and whatnot, they’re willing to sell their souls to promote the certain loser. In other words, the same reason Bush is still in office.

  • workingclass artist

    Annnnnnd…..Obama says he sat in a church for 20 years and had no idea his pastor spewed forth racist blather and twisted anti-american mythologies induced by paranoia…..

  • beebop

    Black Like Me is the story of a WHITE MAN TRYING TO PASS AS BLACK … have you never used a search engine shithead?

  • workingclass artist

    LOL…You said it…..

  • Talktruth

    That would be so heartbreaking, to have your mother kick you to the curb at any age, but jeez, at 10. That is basically saying, “You are not worth my time any longer.” It’s gotta screw with your mind, big time. So the mother was very self-absorbed, also. I’ll tell you what, you could take everything else away from me in my life, but you’d better never touch my kids. I guess Stanley didn’t feel the same way.

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    Well if it’s a man looking in a mirror with dark glasses as in the photo that later was a cover on a publication of Black Like Me (see above photo), you are in.

  • workingclass artist

    Wait till you get to his embarrassment about his mommy’s Mandingo fantasies…..

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    And that would show that he saw the article in Sepia rather than Time or Newsweek. Robert Bonazzi has already mentioned that it appeared in the three publications. He just didn’t think Sepia would be in Indonesia. You will remember that Barack says it was Life, or Ebony. I can GUARANTEE you it was in Sepia. Bonazzi already knew that. And so?

  • Mel

    ever think it was the Al Jolson (sp?) story he actually saw?

    It is pathetic to try and get into the mind of a pathalogical liar, only causes you to become one, don’t cross that bridge, you then only end up with the likes of Michelee…shrill eery feeling up my leg…..lol

  • Kevin

    geez… first off, are you still saying a single mother could not have been receiving foodstamps? It’s just impossible?

    Anyway, it wasn’t in indonesia… that claim first appears in another Times article

    http://tinyurl.com/yxu75l

    While living in hawaii w/ the grandparents and mom is a phd student.

  • beebop

    His father did nothing for him after the age of two. I wouldn’t fault her exclusively.

    And she’s the “teenage mother” who is supposed to be rehabilitating him with working class people so as Barbara Bush would opine, “that’s working out quite well for him.”

  • mimi

    Sure I agree. Memory is via the mind which can play tricks on you.

    The only problem is that Dreams… is filled with a lot of this.

    A few classmates in Hawaii have called Barry on his recollections in school. It seems he didn’t relate to the other black kid there at all or seem too preoccupied with race. He also talks about going to parties at a military base and the older black kids who use to go to these parties remember distinctly that Barry never accompanied them to any of these parties. He also talks about speaking the language while in Indonesia and a teacher there remembered specifically that he was awful and never could master the language. He talks about being tormented there because of his skin color, but a classmate in Indonesia said that Barry was teased because of his weight and the fact that he was better fed than the other kids. Isn’t this a Third World country?

    This stuff can be googled.

  • workingclass artist

    So What….I don’t buy it….I think he borrowed the story from a college friend….

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    Let him go. What he will find, if anything, is what Bonazzi already knows and has mentioned. It would only solve which of the three magazines he saw it in, but it doesn’t negate what you are saying about Black Like Me and the man in the dark glasses in the mirror.

    Incidentally, Griffin wore the dark glasses because he was blind for years.. I guess he had his sight back at the time of his publication though, but he still wore dark glasses.

  • beebop

    Please ….

    Joe Klein’s article? Barack Obama’s words being reported in Time are as good as his earlier character reference for Uncle Jerry.

  • typical.white.person

    Obama looks stoned.

  • Troll Drill Thrall

    I saw the name Kevin in the recent comments list and for some reason thought when I clicked on the link I would find a steaming pile of fresh dog shit.

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    Was there an article in Sepia about a black man who tried to peel off his skin? Stay tuned.

    This is a valid question, I think. Good luck with that, particularly in Indonesia. Time or Newsweek, yes.

  • workingclass artist

    Also if they lived with Gramps and Granny they probably did not qualify….You have to meet an income standard to recieve any State/Fed aid…..Try again….
    Dig it up…Govt. keeps records forever….Unless they are the state senate records of a certain POTUS candidate from ILL.

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    Yeah I’ve seen that pic. I just don’t connect smoking to being like some serious offense that’s imprisonable. Maybe because I once did it. I wonder if he still smokes in secret though.

  • Kevin

    grow up child. as noted – clearly he “mis-remembered” if he’s thinking of the Time article published re: “Black Like Me”.

    It’s more likely that he’s thinking about Sepia magazine which was where the original idea and research work for the novel came from.

    Again – how is this different than Tuzla? You were one of the most vocal to say it was no big deal…

  • workingclass artist

    Cluster Fuck of bad decisions….Why Bee I think your being kind…..LOL

  • Kevin

    Ummmm… sorry, but Sepia was available throughout asia well up until the ’80s – frequently read by US military… tons of it is around from vietnam, etc.

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    Al Jolson was white. He painted his face didn’t he? And that was way before the 60s, wasn’t it?

  • mimi

    DEM, me too. I dismissed it because it was the complete opposite and because it was 1960.

    I saw the movie with James Whitmore.

  • workingclass artist

    Hmmmm……US FOOD STAMPS allowed Barry to be chunky and get teased by evil hungry skinny kids….How very under class of those kids..

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    Where IS Oprah. SHe sure stopped campaigning for Barack. Of course she did end up with that rating reduction, so she probably saved herself.

  • Troll Drill Thrall

    Oprah is an idiot.

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    Kevin, repeat after me. The Time article was a reprint of the same article in Sepia. As was the Newsweek article. Now all you need to do is find another sepia piece of a man in dark glasses looking in a mirror just like Black Like Me, only in reverse. Good luck with that.

  • beebop

    grow up child

    Fuck you.

  • workingclass artist

    His mother was a full time student right…God knows what my kid could say as I used to drag her tiny ass to job sites cause I could not afford day care….I’d paint and she’d color…If Barry’s still mad at Mommy well than he has’nt learned at all what is most important about being a parent.
    Finally you begin to see your folks with the eyes of an adult.

  • mimi

    Take it from me, if there was such an article, I would remember it.

    I grew up during that time period. AAs, unlike today, didn’t have a wealth of media dedicated to telling our stories. Many homes had subscriptions to Jet, Ebony and Sepia. All the sensational stories were talked about non-stop.

    I had to sneak a peak at the photo of Emmitt Till’s mangled corpse which appeared in Jet Magazine. I was barely out of kindergarten and a very curious child. I was traumatized for months and couldn’t sleep.

    When Black Like Me came out it was a big story in the AA community. But this shouldn’t be too hard to trace. This was back before tabloid print journalism had run amok. There’s not that many venues where this article could have appeared.

  • workingclass artist

    I think it was THE WATERMELON MAN….The story is about a bigoted CRACKER who wakes up one day as a Black Man. It was a cutting edge comedy for the times early 1970′s….

  • Mel

    yup, Barry is white too isn’t he?

  • typical.white.person

    I have heard he quit permanently, each time he put one out, until the next time he lights one up.

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    Well if it keeps you busy, have fun. Now remember, he has to be looking in a mirror and have dark glasses.

  • Kevin

    different movie… funny as crap and better than the film adaptation of Black like Me.

  • ces

    Ok, see here, you’ve found this info in what a few minutes, an hour at most?

    Assuming it’s true, why the hell didn’t Barack look it up? Get his facts straight?

    Again, assuming he remembered seeing something like this, why not look it up? People asked him and he didn’t remember? He remembers the almost exact details of the image (from when he was 9(, but now can’t remember which magazine.

    It doesn’t add up.

    Oh, because it was about a white man appearing black. Now I see.

  • beebop

    Not that you would know it from him.

    That’s kind of an entire book all its own.

  • workingclass artist

    I’ll bet he’s picked it up over the last couple of days…I would’nt blame him…

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    Bonazzi does know that it appeared in those three publications. He was Griffin’s biographer so he knows all that stuff. It was just his guess that he saw it in Time or Newsweek rather than Sepia.

    That corpse story sounds VERY traumatic.

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    Kevin, Barry was 9 years old according to his story. So it couldn’t be in the 80s.

  • hillarysmygirl

    And if Reverend Wright thinks that that’s political posturing, as he put it, then he doesn’t know me very well. And based on his remarks yesterday, well, I might not know him as well as I thought, either.

    That struck me, too, typical. If you know so little about someone you’ve spent so much time with over 20 years, who was no longer your pastor only as of 4 months ago, either you were in denial the whole time about who and what he was, or you’re LYING. If your Pastor has watched you grow up from the time you were in your twenties until now and doesn’t know you very well, either you were a really great actor or you’re LYING.

    The Obamabot/pundits on the cable channels keep falling back on the old chestnut, “But Wright’s not running for office. Obama is not Wright.” I’m still resentful that apparently in their minds, Geraldine Ferraro IS running for President this time around and she IS Hillary Clinton. But no matter. No one is saying that Wright is running for office. No one is saying that Obama IS Wright. But we are all wondering how much of who Obama is comes from Wright. The title of the book that made everyone vote for him came from Wright. Obama was proud to admit that his “Uncle” Wright married him and Michelle and baptized their children. The bigoted crazy nut I saw in the “sound bites” is the same bigoted crazy nut I’ve been watching for the last three days. I’ve been to temple with my husband, church with my Black friends and I was raised a Catholic. I guarantee you that my rabbi, my Black minister nor Monsignor Moran ever gave a lecture and ended it with “God Damn America,” or writhed onstage while talking about Bill Clinton. That kind of erases whatever came before it, doesn’t it? No matter how beautiful or eloquent, if at the end you do a crude imitation of JFK or Lyndon Johnson, or reiterate that the US created AIDS to kill the Black folk, that sort of overshadows anything that came before it, doesn’t it?

    William Ayers and Tony Rezko aren’t running for President either. But what does his longtime association with them say about Barack? And the fact that he keeps LYING about it makes it worse. I’m (almost) willing to forgive this “fudge” or OAML (Obama Acquired Memory Loss, thanks Larry) about the “Black Like Me” reference. Hell, we’ll give him one since Hillary admitted she made a mistake about the Bosnia thing. Sometimes I mix up my memories too. But she admitted her mistake and apologized. And when people bring it up again and again (which I’m sure Bill O’Reilly will do tomorrow), she continues to admit her mistake and apologize. She doesn’t get exasperated and whiny and reprimand whoever asked her, she realizes this stuff comes with the territory. And then she starts talking about the economy or health care or children or whatever is REALLY important.

    When is Barry going to have a “racial awakening” about his White side? He still has a week before Indiana and North Carolina, surely he can whip something up before then!

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    All righty. we will wait for you to show us a pic of a black guy wearing dark glasses looking in a mirror horrified that his skin is burned off. We’ll wait.

  • Mel

    Boy on 360 Roland is really trying to save Obama big time!

  • typical.white.person

    Obama is such a cool cat, he dresses differently when he wants to go out without being recognized. His floppy ears are too obvious to hide, though.

  • Troll Drill Thrall

    Obama is like a Babooshka nesting doll, you look inside and just when you thought you’ve seen into him there’s another hidden layer. He’s a walking disaster psychologically unfit to be commander-in-chief.

  • workingclass artist

    Wait…South East Asia in 1969….Right….Was Barry living on a military base with his AMERICAN MOMMY AND AN INDONESIAN STEP DAD….Wait maybe the step dad was working on the base.
    Or maybe he went there for lunch after prayers at the mosque.
    I know mommy was an under cover agent for the CIA and she invented that CRACK and brought it back to the states to piss off Pastor Wright…..Keep digging Kevin maybe Barry will pay you over time….

  • workingclass artist

    OK Kevin….It’s 1969…The height of the BLACK POWER and BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL MOVEMENT….and little Barry is in Indonesia and happens across a story about a Black Man who has tried to change the color of his skin…Hmmmm….Nope !
    As I recall Lena Horne was very outspoken about having to wear skin lightening make up in movies. The years and the times don’t add up.

  • Kevin

    that’s not even close to what he says happened… but I understand the confusion since you haven’t read the book, eh?

  • MessyMarcy

    Scroll up and read beebop’s comment above. Then contemplate four more years of Bush-like government, only with Ayers, Auchi, the Daley machine and whoever else is due to come out of the woodwork of Obama’s friends added in. Then ask yourself whether it is even possible to overplay fear in regard to his candidacy.

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    I used the Chicago Tribune store linked above as well as Bonazzi’s information.

  • Jason

    Yes, we know who she is too. Which is why more than 50% of the people in the country find her untrustworthy.

    Its you people who have your heads up your collective @sses.

  • Kevin

    sorry artist, but stories about folk burning their skin w/ bleaching agents were pretty much par for the course since the 20′s in black magazines, not to mention ads for competing products. Hell – someone further up the thread cited Lena Horne’s frequent complaints about being forced to use them. One of the things she talks about is being burned… but nevermind…

    It’s not as implausible as you believe.
    And there’s a hell of a difference between mis-remembering or mis-speaking regarding a childhood incident; and coming under sniper fire as an adult… :)

  • jwrjr

    That’s a nasty thing to say about Peter Sellers.

  • workingclass artist

    Barry is certifiably 1/2 CRACKER FROM THE HEART LAND on the way to the tropics….

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    As you can see they debunked his Life Magazine and Ebony claim. No such piece no such photos. So now Bonazzi brought up Sepia, Time and Newsweek as Black Like Me places. So off you go. We will wait. You give me a bona fide Sepia archive photo that fits hie description of the photo and I will post it on my blog personally. We’ll wait…

    You will want to look at any time pre 1971, since Barry says he was nine.

  • Mel

    Out of the past few day, I have to commend Rev Wright, not for what he has said, but for not wavering from his beliefs!

    Obama read some polls and wavered, typical politician with no moral values exposed, good bad or indifferent, just poll driven!

  • Troll Drill Thrall

    If you were secure in your beLIEf that Obama will win you would not be here trying to convince yourself since we are hopeless and have our heads up our asses.

  • workingclass artist

    Hmmm….Well I think he would have had better luck playing up the story of evil hungry skinny kids who bullied him in school. The working class would have understood that except he was sure it was because he was biracial when according to the kids he was chubby and they resented it that he was better fed….The memory is tricky….
    Maybe a caution against writing memoirs…..No ?

  • Troll Drill Thrall

    Obama’s statement in speeches and I quote for complete accuracy:

    You forgot to issue barf bags prior to quoting his speeches.

  • Jason

    Thats a very mature response. Grow up? Please explain how you take Obama to task for misremembering something WHEN HE WAS 9 (as simple as switching a white person trying to be black with a black person trying to be white) but do NOT take Hillary to task for making up a story about facing non-existent sniper fire when she was in her 40s and which was on tv.

    Seriously, your hypocrisy is mind-boggling.

    Oh right, fuck me too, good come back.

  • INNERMOST CRACKER

    Got cheese?

  • workingclass artist

    Is there a betting pool on if Kevin can dig this up ?
    Just wonderin….

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    So basically you are saying that Bonazzi’s description using Barry’s own words in Quotes is a lie then.

  • Jason

    Actually I’m here because you people amuse me.

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    Yeah there’s that too.

  • Andy

    Its you people who have your heads up your collective @sses.

    You are sweet aren’t you. Vulgarity won’t get your idol elected nor get you too far in life.

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    He has only a partially photographic mind?

  • workingclass artist

    ROFL…and a sputter….

  • Xeno

    The obots also might want to look up the history of the Food Stamp Program. It did not become a nationwide program until 1974. Prior to that time, it was limited to certain areas, mostly rural and inner city, and did not serve many people.

    (Also bear in mind that one cannot get US Food Stamps (or any other subsidy) while living in a foreign country. Believe me, I had clients who tried it when I worked for the government.)

    Now, remember Bwack’s biography. In 1974, he was thirteen years old and living with his wealthy grandparents in Hawaii. His mother was living abroad at the time. There is no way on earth that a child of privilege like BO ever received Food Stamps.

    Come to think of it, though, BO is old enough to remember the S&H Green Stamps that everyone got at the grocery store. Maybe he’s conflating those with Food Stamps, just like he confused Black Like Me with a Life Magazine article.

  • alibe

    I have always said, after having raised 3 children by myself after their father left, if they ever write a book about their father and his dreams I will disown them. Can you imagine the hurt a mother would feel if her ungrateful children were so enamored with a deadbeat dad that they would dismiss her and his grandparents to idolize a loser at their expense?

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    Poor Roland has lost pounds in perspiration during this campaign. The guy is constantly stretching.

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    Larry King is doing the story right now.

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    Man Barry looks older than he did six months ago.

  • Troll Drill Thrall

    Roland is the ipecac of CNN.

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    Bless your heart, Alibe.

  • mimi

    Actually, it was the Emmitt Til photo of his mangled corpse in Jet Magazine that traumatized me.

    The Black Like Me story was a mere curiosity. The idea that some white person would darken his skin and pass for black made no sense to me and my friends. I mean, hadn’t he seen the photo of Emmit Til’s corpse????

    Like James Frey, Barry decided the version in his alternate universe was better. More dramtic and effective. When in fact the truth was just as interesting if it made him as a biracial child think about being black and what race meant to the larger society.

    That is, unless he asked the same question I did. Why would a white person want to be black? But then, that’s a truth even pure black people don’t have the courage to admit lest it sound like they are not proud.

    It never occurs to these people that in a child’s world everything is visceral, therefore children will do anything to fit in if it means avoiding pain. I say the impression made on Barry is the exact oppostie of what he wrote about. He wanted to fit in with the family he lived with . And I don’t blame him for that. He was a child. It’s something a child would want to do. It’s not a commentary on how he felt about the African side of his DNA.

    I do condemn him for rewriting the history of his childhood psyche from the perspective of adult bravado and being self-conscious about how such truths would play in the AA community.

    That smacks of cunning.

  • Andy

    but do NOT take Hillary to task for making up a story about facing non-existent sniper fire when she was in her 40s and which was on tv.

    Big difference: she said that verbally in a day
    (yes couple of times and yes it was a mistake as she recognized) but she wrote it correctly in her book. And as she said: “I knew better since I wrote -correctly- about it in my book”

  • Troll Drill Thrall

    Soon The Precious will finish his metamorphosis into Gollum.

  • Kevin

    Not at all, but since the account I quoted from the book doesn’t seem to describe a scene from Black Like Me, I have no problme whatsoever believeing that Bonazzi is mistaken in his belief that that’s what Obama was referring to.

    In all honesty – I believe Obama has conflated in him mind a childhood memory. He’s taken various images and articles and combined them into a nice little vignette that for publishing.

    Did he see images of a black man who’d burned his skin using a bleaching agent? Probable. Did he see an article about Black like Me? Probable.

    I still have to ask, how is it different than Tuzla (which is what I asked from the get go)?

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    you might as well add, then how come she is doing better in the national polls against McCain than Obama is now? They must be not trusting him as much as you would like to think. Or is it just plain Competence?

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    You amuse us too. You all never show up unless Barry is in trouble.

  • workingclass artist

    Love the handle…are you intergrated fully….

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    You are sweet aren’t you. Vulgarity won’t get your idol elected nor get you too far in life.

    …but it is a whole lot easier than mastering the language.

  • Andy

    And? What’s happening on LK? (thanks; don’t have cable)

  • Jason

    They don’t want to answer the question, because they can’t.

    Especially since someone not getting the details right when thinking back to something that happened when they were 9 is wholly different than someone making up a story that makes them sound tough when they are in their 40s.

  • Kevin

    “I do condemn him for rewriting the history of his childhood psyche from the perspective of adult bravado ”

    and how many adults haven’t done that… regardless of the audience?

    Seriously…

  • workingclass artist

    Well….Political anything can do that to anyone (except Dan Quayle)

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    You watch. Wright will come up with proof he was in the audience when he said something really bad. Wright is on a mission. I just don’t know why. Maybe because he expected Barack to say all that stupid stuff he said?

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    Well Kevin says he’s going to prove you wrong.

  • Troll Drill Thrall

    Tag team trolls, how quaint.

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    It’s no big deal to me. Tuzla isn’t a novel full of bebunked stories purported to be the truth.

  • workingclass artist

    Ehemm……I think CRACKERS would be most appropriate….No ?

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    Kevin, it’s not a “scene” from black like me, it’s the PHOTO that was in the article. If you scroll up to the article, you will SEE the photo of Griffin in his dark glasses. THAT is the photo what was used in the magazine articles. It was also used as a cover on one of the book runs.

  • workingclass artist

    I think Uppity and Kevin are becoming a reality show…..This challenge is highly entertaining…

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    But how many of them run for president right after they write the book?

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    Hahahaha.

  • workingclass artist

    EXCELLENT XENO….Maybe Kevin can dig up the S&H stamps and we sweeten the pot…..No ?

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    Well Dan Quayle didn’t age because he never had to think.

    He was the dumbest SOB that ever graced the white house. Bush is a genius next to Dan.

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    Ok we will give you jam.

  • workingclass artist

    LOL…. Uppity Barry has had a few bad days recently…..No ?

  • Northwest rain

    I’m working on her to write a book about her life. She’s a diva — with a kind heart. She had notes from her tour of the south — and gave the notes to a editor at a publishing house — and then heard nothing. She was ahead of her time. Her father was a minister and that’s where she learned to perform! She’s played with Louie Armstrong and some of the well know Big Band names. She is STILL performing — she opens at the end of May for the summer season. Still play jazz!

    I’ll keep at her to start writing — or use a tape recorder. Her son also wants her to write about her tour with the Black all girls band.

    Thanks for the kind words about my writing!

    Oh — my friend voted for Hillary — no contest as far as she is concerned.

  • workingclass artist

    Kevin do you have a problem with ………ehemmmm
    …….crackers……..?

  • workingclass artist

    LOL….Dan Quayle the PRIDE OF INDIANA……

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    Well Bush always did the same thing. People were asked to sign ‘loyalty’ statements before they could get in.It figures.

    I don’t think it’s illegal,though. Just kind of arrogant. But then Barry is no stranger to arrogance. I don’t imagine any of those blue collar white folks he needs to vote for him will show up to that kind of thing. Basically, his Choir will go. And people who have no intention of voting for him but want to attend a concert will check the box. It’s just like those exit polls where people lie.

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    I know, quite a few pundits mentioned that. It was like, He’s not thinking of Me!

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    No it’s not. It’s just a book of lies is all. At the very least he could have published it under Fiction, don’t you think?

    Bonazzi quotes his “decription” of the man. He didn’t “misremember”, he reversed it.

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    It’s not just one impression he went under fire for. His conversations with his friend Ray about white people never happened, along with a host of other things in the book. His problem is he wrote it all down and published it biographically. That opens him up to the debunking the Tribune has done to him. At least call the book fiction, then you have latitude.

  • Fred C. Dobbs

    Gee, you’ve debunked another of my deeply-cherished myths. I have always thought that, this being America and, by definition, a Meritocracy, that the cream always rose to the top.

    You are now saying, in essence, that station and success are determined NOT by how smart or accomplished one is, but rather, from whose crotch one was yanked?

    I am SHOCKED, SHOCKED I tell you!!!

  • Northwest rain

    He’s also a liar — because he WANTED to live with his grandparents (rich grandparents) in Hawaii and go the school in Hawaii.

    The choice was his — he always follows the money.

    And again he grew up in Hawaii — where it is an asset to be non white. There are so many races in Hawaii and a huge majority of the kids are mixed race — no big deal. He also wanted to go to Punahoe — which is a very exclusive school. Again — he follows the money. He could have remained with his mother — but his grandparents were richer.

    He’s made a lot of choices in his life — and he also blames his mother for far more than she had control of. His father left because he was a creepy, self centered SOB. He was abusive to his other white wife — and more than likely Obama was fortunate that his biological father deserted he and his mother.

    Mimi — you have a stronger stomach than I do. Buzzflash was pushing Obama’s book and there is no way I could force myself to read his crap.

    I’m looking forward to more of your insight — the angst of a half-black guy who grew up well off in Hawaii. He is after all also white.

  • Fred C. Dobbs

    Those two clowns and the brother-in-law couldn’t run a two-hole shithouse without an MBE or WBE set-aside.

    I think that you have defamed clusterfucks all over the world!

  • Fred C. Dobbs

    Has he tried the Yellow Pages?

  • llilytoo

    While Oprah isn’t doing BO shows, she made Rachael Ray do one with Mrs.Obama.Of course Ray’s show is produced by Oprah’s company and Ray had better do a pro BO show or her honky ass will be on the street.Then again Ray may really support BO, but we’ll never know

  • Theresa

    Why do you have so much hate in you? The fact that you claim to be such a big Hillary Supporter and consider yourself to be representive of the people who support her,scares me to death! If I didn’t know better, I’d think that you were really a Far Right Representive just trying to create havoc in the Democratic election. The thought of closed minded people like you voting in this election is one of the most terrifying things I can think of. We need to be joining together in this country, not trying to destroy each other. We have enough enemies around the world to do that for us. I used to be a big Hillary supporter and I even thought that if I had to live with another Republican Pres. I could live with McCain. But now… after watching and reading everything I possibly can…there is only one choice for me and that is Barack Obama. He is the most intellegent,sincere, compassionate, and honest politian that I have ever had the pleasure of witnessing. In case you are wondering-I am a 50 yr. old, white, middle class, Catholic wife and mother. I am highly intellegent & intuitive and feel very confident in my choice. I pray for all of us that God’s will- will be done. It’s our only hope! I’ll also pray for your anger to subside when he wins.

  • llilytoo

    You said it…they do love Obama, he’s a sure loser and they dream of when he tanks for MaCain, they can get that third home somewhere. Thank God Hill’s in it to win it. Between Barry and MaCain , she looks like freaking Lincoln, Sojour Truth and FDR combined. GO HILL!!

  • Willie B

    It was I had to read it in high school between 69-72.

  • Robb

    do any of you know how you can tell if obama is telling lies? it’s easy, his lips are moving!

  • Catriley

    Obama and I are the same age (though I’m much, much, cooler), and Black Like Me was required reading at my school. I have no doubt it was in his, as well.

    As with the excerpts of his book that I’ve read, this smacks of his immature writing style and skills. His stuff read like high school fan fiction — overly dramatic and pretty unbelievable.

    He’s so fake. He’s 46 and seems like he still has no idea who he really is… I don’t blame him for that, his life has been so unfocused and scattered. But I don’t want him to be president, either.

  • Catriley

    But he had really really good hair.

  • lililam

    Number 9 is what turned me away from BO initially- I’ve never seen anyone else reference it before. I couldn’t believe my ears when he said “10,000″ people were killed in the Kansas tornado, when the actual number was 11. This was early last year. I thought “who is this fool?”

  • http://Whosturnisit? TeakWoodKite

    Let me “mislearn” off something,Kevin. The Mental Room Service, you require, is not available to non reading members. “Since I haven’t read his book” Have you ever been told, in advance, of a cork screw landing, you might be shot at?

    The ruling means the ID requirement will be in effect for next week’s presidential primary in Indiana, where a significant number of new voters are expected to turn out for the Democratic contest between Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080429/ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_voter_id

  • http://Whosturnisit? TeakWoodKite

    Jason; with the Hockey Mask?

  • rjj

    not necessarily cunning.

    It is the way memory and the rest of the brain works – specially when writing. Whole passages of text spontaneously drop onto the page (Kipling describes this in “The Light that Failed”). It is never clear where this text comes from. Could be memory, could be newly hatched (or synthesized) in the wetware – like dreams.

    In the olden days before copyright and intellectual property laws writers (and composers!!!) would lift whole works from one another. People seldom objected, unless the original was sent up — or improved.

    All good stuff comes from The Muse. The credit line is a vanity.

    Poor Waffles, even tho he’s not too perceptive and less than up to speed in policy matters, he has spent thirty five years struggling with his identity – we owe him the nomination as reparation.

  • rjj

    He’s so fake. He’s 46 and seems like he still has no idea who he really is…

    There’s a lot of that going around. People identify. It is like Dubya’s appeal to the shitbums-with-masculinity-issues demographic.

  • http://www.reclusiveleftist.com Violet Socks

    Just a note: Black Like Me wasn’t a novel. A novel is a work of fiction, a story — like Moby Dick.

    Black Like Me was a non-fiction book, a journalistic memoir of Griffin’s experiences.

  • bmobley

    Thank you mtunes! I was just sitting here reading these posts and thinking exactly what you posted. Nobodies memories of childhood are exactly what actually happened. I have a sister that swears that she remembers everything from when we were kids. EVERYTHING. Of course, her memories don’t always jibe with mine or my brother’s memories, but she is never persuaded that she might be wrong or “misremembering”. I have also seen people start out with a good story of their childhood, then with multiple tellings of that story, get bored with it and often add little things that improve the story but aren’t necessarily true. But, it’s a better story. Tell it enough times and you somehow convince yourself it’s the way it happened. Memory is the most flawed of all human capabilities. Just think how reluctant police are to accept eye-wittness accounts of events. People are inclined to confirm their already biased perceptions and are easily. though very possibly subconsciously, influenced by them.
    Personally I am for Hillary, but come November, I’ll vote for what ever candidate is on the ticket. I don’t find the comments on this thread particullary helpful to the goal of ensuring the election of a Democrat for President.

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    Well I am kind of inclined to think Barky’s book IS fiction, but Brittannica disagrees with you about all novels being fiction:
    http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9056067/nonfiction-novel

    Truman Capote coined “nonfictional novel”.It’s been used and abused ever since:
    http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:uKAZxBCZtUEJ:www.nytimes.com/ads/capote/capote_10.html+nonfiction+novel&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=us&ie=UTF-8

    For you younger folks, Wiki re: Autobiographical Novel

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobiographical_novel

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    …but most of all, it fit into the article title size.

  • workingclass artist

    ROFL….Fred you are priceless….I salute you sir….

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    I still remember his trip to latin america and telling them he took Latin in law school. Priceless. Just priceless. But yeah he was cute…in an Alfred E Neuman kind of way anyhow.

  • http://myspace.com/loyaldissent Garlic-Nosed Guitarist

    Americans do continue to pick cute idiots for leaders.

  • Talktruth

    You’re welcome. Your posts are very helpful, especially when the chips are down for Hillary.

    You and/or your friend might consider a digital voice recorder. I just discovered these last year. You can record to them easily, and the recording can be downloaded into a computer. Here’s a link, if you’d like to look at one: http://www.olympusamerica.com/cpg_section/cpg_vr_digitalrecorders.asp

  • Talktruth

    Seriously! Again with the judgment thing…

  • beebop

    Uppity …

    I found a really interesting article about old Uncle Jerry from Newsmax. Barry isn’t the only person who needed some street creds.

    In his speech on race, Barack Obama tried to explain away his longtime minister’s denunciations of America by saying that for blacks of his generation, memories of “humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away.”
    But an examination by Newsmax of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.’s background reveals that Obama’s characterization of his upbringing is mythology.
    Described by Obama as his sounding board and mentor for more than two decades, Wright was born in Philadelphia in 1941. He lived in a racially mixed section called Germantown, which consisted of homes on broad tree-lined streets in northwest Philadelphia. The owners then were middle-class families.
    For 62 years, Wright’s father, the Rev. Jeremiah Alvesta Wright, was pastor at Grace Baptist Church of Germantown. He was one of the first blacks to receive a degree from the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.
    Wright’s mother, Mary Elizabeth Henderson Wright, was a schoolteacher. She was the first black to teach an academic subject at Roosevelt Junior High, the first to teach at Germantown High, and the first to teach at the Philadelphia High School for Girls. She became vice principal of Girls High in 1968.
    Rather than attend the more racially mixed Germantown High School at 40 East High St., Wright traveled a few miles to the elite Central High School at 1700 West Olney Ave., graduating in 1959. Opened in 1838, Central High has a distinguished past and admits only highly-qualified applicants who are privileged to attend from all over the city. It is comparable to the Bronx High School of Science and Boston Latin School, both public schools known for academic excellence.
    When Wright attended Central High, the student body was 90 percent white, according to students who attended around the same time. At least three-quarters of the students were Jewish. Former students of the period say racial tension did not exist.
    Bill Cosby, who attended the school until transferring to Germantown High, has referred to Central as a “wonderful” school. In contrast to Wright, Cosby has denounced blacks who take refuge in self-pitying victimhood and seek to blame whites for problems in the black community.
    “Central High was a marvelous academic environment,” says Tod Mammuth, who graduated in 1965 and is now a Philadelphia-area lawyer. “You had to have high academic credentials to be accepted and a high IQ score. Many later said it was more rigorous than college. We had no racial friction.”
    In college, “I was so far advanced from the normal kids, it was almost unbelievable,” says H. Yale Gutnick, who graduated from Central High in 1960 and is a Pittsburgh lawyer. “In my freshman year, I didn’t have to do anything. I had already read most of what we had to read in English class, and I was equally advanced in the other academic areas.”
    The 211th class yearbook described Wright as a respected member of the class.
    “Always ready with a kind word, Jerry is one of the most congenial members of the 211,” the yearbook said. “His record in Central is a model for lower class [younger] members to emulate.”
    Saying Wright can be compared to the school handbook’s description of “an educated man,” the description said Wright was “the epitome of what Central endeavors to imbue in its students.”
    Next to a photo of Wright wearing black-rimmed glasses, the yearbook listed seven extra-curricular activities, including junior varsity football, band, school orchestra, and swing band.
    In contrast to Wright’s comfortable upbringing, Morton A. Klein, who also attended Central High around the same time, lived in a poor, virtually all-black section called West Oak Lane.
    “Four times a year, we would go to get big boxes of used clothing that was our wardrobe for the year. I never resented it. I was thrilled with my clothes,” says Klein, who was an economist in the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations and is now president of the Zionist Organization of America.
    “We never went out to eat,” says Klein. “We had no car. We did not go to summer camp or take vacations. I had dozens of black friends. We played in the street every day. I remember my childhood as wonderful, and it certainly did not breed hatred of America. I loved America.”
    In contrast, the man Obama describes as being like an uncle has blamed America and whites for starting the AIDS virus to kill off blacks, training professional killers, importing drugs, and creating a racist society to oppress blacks.
    “The government gives them drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law, and then wants to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, not ‘God Bless America’ — God damn America,” Wright has said.
    In a similar vein, Michelle Obama has said she is proud of America for the first time. Last week, Obama said Americans in small towns are “bitter” and cling in frustration to “guns, or religion, or antipathy to people who aren’t like them…”
    In his speech on race, Obama sought to evoke sympathy for Wright. He described a “lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family…”
    Obama said this was “the reality in which Rev. Wright and other African-Americans of his generation grew up. They came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land and opportunity was systematically constricted….Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Rev. Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years.”
    In retirement, Wright will continue a life of privilege that dates back to Central High. As a retirement gift, Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ is building him a million-dollar home abutting Odyssey Country Club and Golf Course in the nearly all-white Chicago suburb of Tinley Park. The home sits on land the pastor purchased in 2004 for $345,000. In December 2006, Wright sold the land to his church, which took out a $1.6 million mortgage on the property. In April 2007, the church applied for a building permit for the brick and stone structure.
    Wright’s new home has 10,340 square feet of space, about four times the size of a typical suburban house. It includes four bedrooms, an elevator, an exercise room, and a four-car garage.
    Rather than being a victim of oppression of blacks, as Obama has claimed, Wright is a symbol of the American dream. Rather than meriting sympathy, he exemplifies what my friend Fox News contributor Juan Williams describes as black leaders who orchestrate support for themselves by manipulating blacks into seeing themselves as victims, creating a black “culture of failure.”
    Obama’s attempt to excuse Wright’s hate-America rhetoric by deceptively describing his personal history and his failure to condemn him as a bigot speak volumes about the candidate’s own character and fitness to lead the country.
    Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com. View his previous reports and get his dispatches sent to you free via
    e-mail. Go here now.

  • susan

    Obama associates with some very scary people, such as Rezko and BFF Alsammarae, and that whole corrupt Chicago political machine is beyond belief scary! Read Evelyn Pringle’s 3-part expose’ on Obama’s rise in Chicago politics to learn just how dangerous an Obama presidency could be! Now, having said that, can anyone tell me why the DNC abd party leaders continue to support him??? They must know these things! What are the stakes for them??? Has the Chicago corruption already extended to the DNC??? I need help under standing this, and have just emailed my senator, Chris Dodd, to ask him these questions. I encourage you all to do the same with your senators and congressmen!

  • Rob in Chicago

    But he apparently has the big bucks with which to buy the loyalties of a number of Superdelegates, and the only question is whether all of those bought-and-paid-for Superdelegates will remain “honorable” politicians, and stay bought. For the sake of this country, I hope that they take his money and then vote for Hillary. He has done nothing to earn or deserve respect or honor.

  • Leisa

    I was required to read this book in middle school for my civics class. The year was 1977.

    I was a great book as I recall.

  • http://www.reclusiveleftist.com Violet Socks

    The definition of novel has not changed.

    When Capote invented the “nonfiction novel, it was a new genre. You need both words — “nonfiction novel” — to describe it.

    The word “novel” by itself signifies a work of fiction.

  • Rob in Chicago

    Jason:

    Your comments absolutely confirm the points made in UPPITY’S article.

  • Rob in Chicago

    Theresa:
    You apparently made a wrong turn, and wound up at a site that would be willing to refer you for professional help, but would not be swayed by your “findings” that Barack Obama “is the most intellegent,sincere, compassionate, and honest politian that I have ever had the pleasure of witnessing.” Now, to help you on your way, Daily Kos and Huffington Post are in the other direction, and the Kool-Aid is icy cold and refreshing.

  • Leisa

    Theresa,

    I am sure you will find comfort at KOS or Huffpo… I never read hateful negative things there… ;)

    I think you are reading frustrated people, who have been Hillary supporters and have been abused for it. Yes, we are tired not only of being abused for wanting to exercise our right to vote for our candidate of choice, we are tired of the media twisting and distorting events for some reason that is hard to fathom.

    You apparently have been too busy to read up on what has happened to some people at caucuses at the hands of Obama supporters… Do you know about the CNA problems?

    I think your opinion is based on one or two frustrated posts… I am sorry for you.

    Go defend Hillary on KOS or other MSM posts. You can get a good idea of what hate looks like there.

    Have a nice day.

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    A guy from Chicago who knows Barry better than we do, yes??

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    Gee you know you’re right. Why should I hate anybody in the Obama campaign or Barack Obama? I mean, I have only been called a c*nt four times. And that thing over at my.barackobama about slitting hillary’s throat and tossing her in a river was just downright Papal wasn’t it? Those “Bro’s Before Ho’s” posters are funny aren’t they?

  • kenoshaMarge

    oh-oh, phony concern troll sighting.

    Pray for yourself Theresa. If you really were highly intelligent and intuitive, modest too, you wouldn’t try spout such nonsense among really intelligent, and very intuitive people like the ones who come here to get the hell away from twits like you. And that’s not anger toots, that just the truth.

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    Who said I consciously made up the story? I used legitimate sources including The Tribune debunker, five pages of it and the piece written about the guy who wrote Griffin’s Biography immediately recognized the Black Like Me Promo shots, and tried to hand Barky a copy of Black Like me.

    Let me know when you find that other picture though.

  • Rob in Chicago

    And she has repeatedly accepted accountability for her misstatement, instead of “spinning” different explanations (“limited hang-out” as per Richard Nixon) until the heat became so unbearable that something approaching the truth was employed as a last and desperate resort.

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    Like I said, you only have so many words for a title. Is this all that important to you? I mean, shall we give the nomination to Barack Obama over this? Where do I sign to shut you up? I mean, I wouldn’t want to move on with any othere stories with this serious thing hanging over my head, would you?

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    On the other hand, just when I was thinking people must run the other way when they see you coming, I clicked on your blog link–something that probably would have never happened as I fly through this place. I like it very much.

  • Kourian

    So if we want to coin a new term or start using ‘novel’ to mean ‘book of any kind’ – do we have to go to Truman Capote and ask him? ;)

  • http://hyper-educated-uppity-woman.blogspot.com Uppity

    Truman is watching you from above. Or below. Or someplace.

  • Mr.Murder

    Barack Obama, putting the “NO” in “Novel” for over 20 years.

  • http://www.stop-obama.org/?p=288 Stop-Obama » Obama on His Racial Awareness (1)

    [...] is a Blatant Lie, and Plagiarism, its source has been identified in one corner I found a collection of Life magazines neatly displayed in clear plastic binders. I [...]

  • http://www.stop-obama.org/?p=293 Stop-Obama » Dreams From My Father, A Forgery.

    [...] 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 [...]

  • endless_nameless

    Wow, you all are pretty upset at what appears to be a little embellishment (although it hasn’t yet been throughly debunked). I’ll bet you all were furious when Hillary lied about the sniper fire. Right? What’s that noise? Crickets? Hey, where’d everybody go? Here’s a little news flash for all the naive people…this is something that politicians do all the time. The Clintons are masters of this. Obama’s is a small fry compared to the whoppers that the Clintons have told.

blog comments powered by Disqus