The following article with preface may be distributed. If used, please contact the author before editing and publication. The author has written and researched for the New York Times, the Miami Herald, the St. Petersburg Times, and the Jewish Information Network, among others. Synopsis: The author opens citing the work of Mr. Richard Cohen of the Washington Post. Mr. Cohen’s columns about the “composites,” rearranged timelines, and complete fabrication of events in Sen. Obama’s autobiography are the basis for a further investigation into Mr. Obama’s claim to be “African-American.”
(NOTE: This IS NOT a rehash of the discredited discussion of either his education in Islamic schools, or any other ties to Islam. His religion, and education, outside of citing his Harvard attendance, play no role whatsoever in this article. THIS ARTICLE PRESENTS NEW, PREVIOUSLY UNPUBLISHED documentation concerning his ethnic identity claims. It is based upon original research that the author openly invites for further inquiry and academic verification in his preface to Mr. Cohen.)
Documentation of his actual ethnic background demonstrates Mr. Obama is not an “African-American” as defined in United States law. This research was initiated by a request from a daily news publication of international reputation in New York City.
The story then moves to documenting his father’s genealogy. This study indicates Sen. Obama is actually Arab-American. The significance of this is that “the soul and substance of Mr. Obama’s claim to fame” rest entirely on his being “the first” African-American to achieve whatever it is that Mr. Obama is claiming at the time. If Mr. Obama is not legally an African-American, then his claims collapse. While there may still be historic firsts, for example, being the first Arab-American to be the president of the Harvard Law Review, those claims are not the star-appeal of his entire political life, and the basis of his current celebrity star status. If he is not African-American, then he is not what has propelled him up the political ladder; he is not, as described by one journalist riding Mr. Obama’s campaign plane, what is currently capturing America’s “cult” attention.
The author includes a section that notes the double-standard Oprah Winfrey applied in her handling of Mr. Obama’s autobiographical fabrications vis a vis her reaction to much less in a book by another author she promoted. It calls upon her to explain her double-standards, and asks, reasonably under the circumstances, if her double-standards are racist.
The article concludes by citing the importance of recognizing that Mr. Obama’s image of himself is built on lies. It challenges the reader to ask if his or her own racist presumptions of ethnic identity tied to physical appearance are at play.
The encapsulation of the final question put to the reader is to ask, “If we elect a person whose entire image is based on lies, and citing again the documentation of Mr. Cohen and the Washington Post to show he continues to lie without conscience as a matter of habit, should the burden fall upon him when we feel the anger of being lied to, or in fact, is it we who should be the object of our anger when it is we who first lied to ourselves when we decided to accept his lies, knowing all along that he was lying to us?”
Monday, Feb. 11, 2008
To: Richard Cohen, Columnist, the Washington Post
From: Kenneth E. Lamb kenneth@kennthelamb.com
Dear Mr. Cohen:
Earlier today, I sent you an email about Sen. Obama. In the course of reviewing it for final draft, I made some changes; for one thing, I upped the number of references to your columns. What follows below is the final draft – it varies significantly from the prior draft by placing more responsibility upon “us” of the American body politic for lying to ourselves, and using racist presumptions to allow Mr. Obama to lie to us as well.
With this amendment, I send to you what I hope will be the first read of the article, and hopefully it may provoke all of us to reexamine ourselves in light of the Obama mania sweeping America.
That said, the rest of the email and article follows with the introduction I sent below for the sake of continuity with my previous communication to you. While similar at first, it is now much more pointed in its condemnation of us for lying to ourselves, again, about whom we elect, and why.
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