The Nice Lady Who Destroyed Obama

By: Yori Yanover

Published: May 18th, 2012
Latest update: May 20th, 2012

Little Barack Hussein Obama with his Kenyan Dad. Why did he have to lie?

Miriam Goderich – remember that name, it will go down in history as the woman who brought down a president. But poor Miriam never did anything bad, in fact, what she did happened decades ago and now it could topple President Barack Hussein Obama.
I wish I knew for sure if Miriam Goderich was Jewish. Can you imagine? Two Jewish women bringing down two presidents, ten years apart, give or take?
Unless you’ve been too busy painting your cave and chasing after mastodons this week, you’ve probably heard Breitbart News has obtained a promotional booklet produced in 1991 by Barack Obama’s then-literary agency, Acton & Dystel, which touts Obama as “born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.”
The booklet, which was distributed to “business colleagues” in the publishing industry, includes a brief biography of Obama among the biographies of eighty-nine other authors represented by Acton & Dystel.
The full text reads:
“Barack Obama, the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii. The son of an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister, he attended Columbia University and worked as a financial journalist and editor for Business International Corporation. He served as project coordinator in Harlem for the New York Public Interest Research Group, and was Executive Director of the Developing Communities Project in Chicago’s South Side. His commitment to social and racial issues will be evident in his first book, Journeys in Black and White.”
Miriam Goderich worked for Acton & Dystel, and was responsible for the above copy (well written, actually). On Thursday she was running around, telling anyone who would care to listen, that the 20-year-old description was “a simple mistake and nothing more.”
Goderich is now a partner at the Dystel & Goderich.
Political Wire published her desperate plea for the world to push this genie back into the bottle (or tea pot, come to think of it) where it belonged:
“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.”
Yes, of course, makes perfect sense: the kid is black, recently graduated from Harvard, very gifted – must have been born in Kenya.
But being born in Kenya was not the part that could doom President Obama’s chances to be reelected. And I realize I’m sounding a bit Tea Partyish here – I assure you I’m not, I’m still a registered Democrat and proud of it (well, maybe not Proud, but certainly kind of ok). Anyway, the reason Obama could fall now is the lie.
If it turns out – as it probably has, now – that Barack Obama lied to all of us about having been born in Kenya, we should not forgive him. Not because he’s a liar but because he’s stupid. Stupid enough to believe you can fool all the people all the time. Certainly not in the You Tube and Facebook era.
Honest Abe Lincoln knew better than that, and he didn’t even have email.
About the Author: Yori Yanover has been a working journalist since age 17, before he enlisted and worked for Ba'Machane Nachal. Since then he has worked for Israel Shelanu, the US supplement of Yedioth, JCN18.com, USAJewish.com, Lubavitch News Service, Arutz 7 (as DJ on the high seas), and the Grand Street News. Now he's here.