# Do the numerous made up assertions about Obama have a common source? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 13, 2012, 9:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-numerous-made-up-assertions-about-obama-have-a-common-source/621760 "2012-05-13T09:59:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2012, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-numerous-made-up-assertions-about-obama-have-a-common-source/621760/41 "2012-05-18T00:14:12Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > You might want to check out today’s Drudge Report: [www.drudgereport.com](http://www.drudgereport.com)😃 Linky no worky. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2012, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-numerous-made-up-assertions-about-obama-have-a-common-source/621760/42 "2012-05-18T00:26:55Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > Did you actually read the article you linked to? It seems to me that it bears out what I said. > > There is no hint there of any Republican bureau of black propaganda. It is just idiots spreading stupid rumors. (Of course, they have a lot of idiots.) But it also says (this is all near the end of the story – not the way I would have written it, burying the lede): > [@](#): > > That leads to the $64,000 question: are these anonymous attacks organic emanations of the diffuse political consciousness, or are they deliberately seeded by professional political operators? [Barbara] Mikkelson [of Snopes] is skeptical that anyone could intentionally write the kind of e-mail that would take off virally. “Even people who are steeped in it, it’s very, very difficult to start something deliberately that will catch on.” Still, there’s some evidence it’s been done. Snopes determined that a gushing pro-Bush e-mail from 2004 about watching the President worship in the pews of St. John’s Church in Washington was actually written by the press spokeswoman for Republican Senator Lamar Alexander. Her name is Laura Lefler, and she now works for Senator Bob Corker. I tried to contact Lefler to get a sense of what inspired her to write the e-mail and how, exactly, she disseminated it, but she wouldn’t return my calls or e-mails. > > \ > > On August 10, 2004, just two weeks after Obama had given his much-heralded keynote speech at the DNC in Boston, a perennial Republican Senate candidate and self-described “independent contrarian columnist” named Andy Martin issued a press release. In it, he announced a press conference in which he would expose Obama for having “lied to the American people” and “misrepresent[ed] his own heritage.” > > Martin raised all kinds of strange allegations about Obama but focused on him attempting to hide his Muslim past. “It may well be that his concealment is meant to endanger Israel,” read Martin’s statement. “His Muslim religion would obviously raise serious questions in many Jewish circles where Obama now enjoys support.” > > A quick word about Andy Martin. During a 1983 bankruptcy case he referred to a federal judge as a “crooked, slimy Jew, who has a history of lying and thieving common to members of his race.” Martin, who in the past was known as Anthony Martin-Trigona, is one of the most notorious litigants in the history of the United States. He’s filed hundreds, possibly thousands, of lawsuits, often directed at judges who have ruled against him, or media outlets that cover him unfavorably. A 1993 opinion by the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, in Atlanta, described these lawsuits as “a cruel and effective weapon against his enemies,” and called Martin a “notoriously vexatious and vindictive litigator who has long abused the American legal system.” He once even attempted to intervene in the divorce proceedings of a judge who’d ruled against him, petitioning the state court to be appointed as the guardian of the judge’s children. > > When I asked Martin for the source of his allegations about Obama’s past, he told me they came from “people in London, among other places.” Why London, I asked? “I started talking to them about Kenyan law. Every little morsel led me a little farther along.” > > Within a few days of Martin’s press conference, the conservative site Free Republic had picked it up, attracting a long comment thread, but after that small blip the specious “questions” about Obama’s background disappeared. Then, in the fall of 2006, as word got out that Obama was considering a presidential run, murmurs on the Internet resumed. In October a conservative blog called Infidel Bloggers Alliance reposted the Andy Martin press release under the title “Is Barack Obama Lying About His Life Story?” A few days later the online RumorMillNews also reposted the Andy Martin press release in response to a reader’s inquiry about whether Obama was a Muslim. Then in December fringe right-wing activist Ted Sampley posted a column on the web raising the possibility that Obama was a secret Muslim. Sampley, who co-founded Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry and once accused John McCain of having been a KGB asset, quoted heavily from Martin’s original press release. “When Obama was six,” Sampley wrote, “his mother, an atheist, married Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian Muslim, and moved to Jakarta, Indonesia… Soetoro enrolled his stepson in one of Jakarta’s Muslim Wahabbi schools. Wahabbism is the radical teaching that created the Muslim terrorists who are now waging Jihad on the rest of the world.” > > On December 29, 2006, the very same day that Sampley posted his column, Snopes received its first copy of the e-mail forward, which contains an identical charge in strikingly similar language. Given the timing, it seems likely that it was a distillation of Sampley’s work. > > Despite the fact that CNN and others have thoroughly debunked the smear, the original false accusation has clearly sunk into people’s consciousness. One Obama organizer told me recently that every day, while calling prospective voters, he gets at least one or two people who tell him they won’t be voting for Obama because he’s a Muslim. According to Google, “Barack Obama Muslim” is the third most-searched term for the Illinois senator. And an August CBS poll found that when voters were asked to give Obama’s religion, as many said Muslim as correctly answered Protestant. > > Oh yeah. And the e-mail continues to circulate. > > “Everybody started calling me” when the e-mail first made the rounds, Andy Martin told me. "They said, ‘Hey, did you write this?’ My answer was ‘they are all my children.’ " That’s how it works. Not centrally organized, perhaps, but not just random solitary citizens venting, either; very definitely crime-with-intent. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2012, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-numerous-made-up-assertions-about-obama-have-a-common-source/621760/43 "2012-05-18T00:31:37Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > You might want to check out today’s Drudge Report: www.drudgereport.com (Fixed link.) [Breitbart](http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/05/17/The-Vetting-Barack-Obama-Literary-Agent-1991-Born-in-Kenya-Raised-Indonesia-Hawaii) covers that in more depth: > [@](#): > > 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.” And: > [@](#): > > _It is evidence–not of the President’s foreign origin, but that Barack Obama’s public persona has perhaps been presented differently at different times._ I’ll believe it when I believe it. It seems highly implausible that in 4+ years of Birther bullshit, and contards looking under rocks and interviewing Obama’s Kenyan relations and dissecting his birth certificate for signs of forgery, something like **this,** purportedly distributed by **Obama himself,** or someone he hired, would not have surfaced before now. And the past four years have taught me that Obama-bashers will lie as easily as they breathe. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2012, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-numerous-made-up-assertions-about-obama-have-a-common-source/621760/44 "2012-05-18T02:30:57Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > That’s how it works. Not centrally organized, perhaps, but not just random solitary citizens venting, either; very definitely crime-with-intent. But whether or not it is centrally organized is precisely the issue. See the thread title. I am certainly not trying to deny (and neither, I think, is anyone else) that some (perhaps even most) of these rumors are started and spread with malicious intent, by Obama haters. But, again, that is not what was being asked about. The question is “do they have a common source?” The answer, according to both common sense and that article, is “No.” Anyway, the article is little more than a mess of malicious speculation and innuendo itself. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2012, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-numerous-made-up-assertions-about-obama-have-a-common-source/621760/45 "2012-05-18T02:52:58Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > Anyway, the article is little more than a mess of malicious speculation and innuendo itself. 😕 It’s thick from beginning to end with documented facts. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2012, 11:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-numerous-made-up-assertions-about-obama-have-a-common-source/621760/46 "2012-05-18T11:00:55Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > I’ll believe it when I believe it. It seems highly implausible that in 4+ years of Birther bullshit, and contards looking under rocks and interviewing Obama’s Kenyan relations and dissecting his birth certificate for signs of forgery, something like **this,** purportedly distributed by **Obama himself,** or someone he hired, would not have surfaced before now. And the past four years have taught me that Obama-bashers will lie as easily as they breathe. It’s worth noting that that article is very, very carefully written. Although they have _ **BORN IN KENYA** _ in giant letters on the front page, the actual article treads very carefully from making any specific accusations. As an easy example, let’s look at the sentence cited above: > [@](#): > > It is evidence–not of the President’s foreign origin, but that Barack Obama’s public persona has perhaps been presented differently at different times. And it has. Often by people making stuff up about him. Did they really use that blurb? Did someone at the publishers’ office make a mistake? Was it a deliberate attempt by them to sell the book by altering his background to create a stronger link of Africa? Did Obama ever even see the damn thing? Who knows? We don’t. They don’t. But the big black words _ **BORN IN KENYA** _ are there nonetheless as a nudge-nudge-wink-wink to the faithful. In short, and to borrow a phrase, > [@](#): > > the article is little more than a mess of malicious speculation and innuendo Quel surprise. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2012, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-numerous-made-up-assertions-about-obama-have-a-common-source/621760/47 "2012-05-18T12:41:51Z")
Actually, this is turning out to be an excellent example of how these stories spread. Breitbart writes it, the [other media pick it up](http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100158834/obama-used-to-be-a-kenyan/), various interested parties [spread the word](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=15076290&postcount=215), the media picks up on the fact that people are interested in the story and talk about it more, rinse and repeat. Note that at no point does anyone seem to be doing much in the way of fact-checking. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-the-numerous-made-up-assertions-about-obama-have-a-common-source/621760.md?page=2)