# Trival Pursuit: Kenyan Edition **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [May 18, 2012, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trival-pursuit-kenyan-edition/622328 "2012-05-18T16:12:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![IntelliQ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e99b99/32.png) [@IntelliQ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IntelliQ)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2012, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trival-pursuit-kenyan-edition/622328/21 "2012-05-18T17:43:31Z")
> [@Gagundathar](#): > > R)epublicans love this kind of stuff. It takes the minds of the electorate off of their obfuscatory tactics. Ahh, I see you chose F. 😉 Damn them right wingers! "Lemmie reword it as R cuz I dont have the eggs to say “it’s a speeeeracy!.” ---
**Author:** ![Happy\_Lendervedder](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/happy_lendervedder/32/8488_2.png) [@Happy\_Lendervedder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Lendervedder)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2012, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trival-pursuit-kenyan-edition/622328/22 "2012-05-18T17:43:31Z")
So how does this blurb written by a third party trump the correct information Obama wrote himself in the book? Did he originally write in his book that he was born in Kenya, and then change that later too? Otherwise, this is an example of a flunky copywriter at an agency who doesn’t apparently care much for details when reading the books junior senators. It’s also an example of Obama opponents straying off of Romney’s “the economy sucks balls” message, so by all means continue spreading this shit. And post more ridiculous threads like this one everyday until the election. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2012, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trival-pursuit-kenyan-edition/622328/23 "2012-05-18T17:56:49Z")
> [@Sicks\_Ate](#): > > It’s too much of a stretch to believe that material that was > > [ul] > [li]meant to get books sold, [/li][li]probably composed with the assistance of or with information provided by Obama[/li][li]proofread by probably yet another party [/li][li]probably approved by O[/li][/ul]…can be classified as a mistake. I doubt very much that any of the items on your list, other than the first one, are true. Authors tend to have very little input on how their book is packaged and marketed. The author bio was probably written by a flunky who skimmed the first ten pages, and wasn’t vetted by anyone outside of checking for spelling and grammar mistakes. Odds are good Obama never saw it until it was published. ---
**Author:** ![Gagundathar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a183cd/32.png) [@Gagundathar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gagundathar)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2012, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trival-pursuit-kenyan-edition/622328/24 "2012-05-18T18:04:20Z")
> [@IntelliQ](#): > > Ahh, I see you chose F. 😉 > > Damn them right wingers! "Lemmie reword it as R cuz I dont have the eggs to say “it’s a speeeeracy!.” No. I did not posit the existence of some vast right-wing conspiracy. That would take a significant amount of actual work and talent to accomplish. It is much easier to attribute laziness and narcissism to the current Congressional leadership than anything resembling consensus seeking behavior. And, the letter ‘R’ was the next one in line to be taken. I was going to say R)idiculously this is still an issue, at least according to some. Perhaps that would have been wittier. That is our goal here, isn’t it? ---
**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, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trival-pursuit-kenyan-edition/622328/25 "2012-05-18T18:31:27Z")
> [@Sicks\_Ate](#): > > Ok again…carelessness? They accidentally said that Obama was born in Kenya and his father was a finance minister? > > It’s material from _his literary agent!_ I don’t think he was born in Kenya, but both he and his agent obviously thought it would make a better bio if he was, ditto having his father be a finance minister. > > That’s not ‘careless’…it’s a calculated lie to inflate his bio. But it still does nothing to bolster the arguments of the birthers. Yeh, yeh, that’s just what [Breitbart](http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/05/17/The-Vetting-Barack-Obama-Literary-Agent-1991-Born-in-Kenya-Raised-Indonesia-Hawaii) said . . . or seemed to be saying . . . it’s hard to tell. > [@](#): > > \*Note from Senior Management: > > Andrew Breitbart was never a “Birther,” and Breitbart News is a site that has never advocated the narrative of “Birtherism.” In fact, Andrew believed, as we do, that President Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 4, 1961. > > Yet Andrew also believed that the complicit mainstream media had refused to examine President Obama’s ideological past, or the carefully crafted persona he and his advisers had constructed for him. > > It is for that reason that we launched “The Vetting,” an ongoing series in which we explore the ideological background of President Obama (and other presidential candidates)–not to re-litigate 2008, but because ideas and actions have consequences. > > It is also in that spirit that we discovered, and now present, the booklet described below–one that includes a marketing pitch for a forthcoming book by a then-young, otherwise unknown former president of the Harvard Law Review. > > 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.\* **Every** successful politician’s public persona has perhaps been presented differently at different times, Mr. Breitbart; it’s kosher. (Only exception I can think of is Biden . . . dunno how he lasted this long . . .) Not that that excuses an actual lie about the basic facts of one’s past. But, in this particular instance, well, I can’t see what practical reason Obama might have **had,** in 1991 or any other year, to falsely claim Kenyan birth. A subordinate’s fact-checking mistake seems to be the choice of Occam’s Razor. ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2012, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trival-pursuit-kenyan-edition/622328/26 "2012-05-18T19:15:35Z")
> [@Sicks\_Ate](#): > > It’s too much of a stretch to believe that material that was > > [ul] > [li]meant to get books sold, [/li][li]probably composed with the assistance of or with information provided by Obama[/li][li]proofread by probably yet another party [/li][li]probably approved by O[/li][/ul]…can be classified as a mistake. Then what do you call something that is obviously mistaken? ---
**Author:** ![Sicks\_Ate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/258eb7/32.png) [@Sicks\_Ate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sicks_Ate)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2012, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trival-pursuit-kenyan-edition/622328/27 "2012-05-18T19:37:25Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > A subordinate’s fact-checking mistake seems to be the choice of Occam’s Razor. And to me, it’s a stretch to imagine that the assistant is the only one who saw it…not one single person who knew O’s biography better saw the thing and said ‘Hey, waitaminit’ for years… Now maybe that’s just exactly what happened, but it just makes my brain itch. Since it can’t really be proven either way, and it’s not extraordinary important to me, I give up. Oh yeah…and I gotta pack to go to Florida. Bitches 😃 ---
**Author:** ![gamerunknown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6bbea6/32.png) [@gamerunknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gamerunknown)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2012, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trival-pursuit-kenyan-edition/622328/28 "2012-05-18T19:47:05Z")
> [@Sicks Ate](#): > > not one single person who knew O’s biography better saw the thing and said ‘Hey, waitaminit’ for years… Which means your position is either D (an amended version which doesn’t include the provisions apologising for birther nonsense) or F according to the OP. In all honesty, I think you can agree that if this were common knowledge before the 2008 elections, the birthers would have added it to their pathetic arsenal then and it would have been refuted just as quickly. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2012, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trival-pursuit-kenyan-edition/622328/29 "2012-05-18T19:58:32Z")
> [@Gagundathar](#): > > … > R)idiculously this is still an issue, at least according to some. In my humble opinion, the birthers are full of S) hit. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2012, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trival-pursuit-kenyan-edition/622328/30 "2012-05-18T19:58:57Z")
> [@Sicks\_Ate](#): > > Ok again…carelessness? They accidentally said that Obama was born in Kenya and his father was a finance minister? > > It’s material from _his literary agent!_ I don’t think he was born in Kenya, but both he and his agent obviously thought it would make a better bio if he was, ditto having his father be a finance minister. > > That’s not ‘careless’…it’s a calculated lie to inflate his bio. But it still does nothing to bolster the arguments of the birthers. Have you ever _had_ a literary agent? Have you ever had an agent of any kind? Let’s try an experiment. Grab a novel you know well, and read the blurb on the back. Then report back, and tell us if it’s: (a) full of errors, or (b) a faithful summation of the contents of the book. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2012, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trival-pursuit-kenyan-edition/622328/31 "2012-05-18T20:40:17Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Since the passage in question also contains another obvious error (from **kd99** ’s link): > > Barack Obama Sr. was a civil service economist in the Kenyan Ministry of Economic Planning and Development, not a “finance minister”. > > Not sure what you mean by “…was repeated a few times by others who didn’t think anything of it”, though. As far as I can tell, even the Birthers have never brought this up. And yet another - from your quote > [@](#): > > He was born in Kenya to an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister and was raised in Indonesia, Hawaii, and Chicago. Obama moved to Chicago after getting his law degree. Saying he was raised there is a bit of a stretch. Given two obvious errors in one sentence, it isn’t exactly a stretch to assume a third. The only miracle here is that this clown got Hawaii right. Quite a conspiracy when Obama carefully disguises his true birthplace in his book but blabs it to his agent. Agents are well known for making NSA employees look clike blabbermouths. And then not checking it. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2012, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trival-pursuit-kenyan-edition/622328/32 "2012-05-18T20:47:37Z")
> [@Sicks\_Ate](#): > > And to me, it’s a stretch to imagine that the assistant is the only one who saw it…not one single person who knew O’s biography better saw the thing and said ‘Hey, waitaminit’ for years… > > Now maybe that’s just exactly what happened, but it just makes my brain itch. > > Since it can’t really be proven either way, and it’s not extraordinary important to me, I give up. How dare they not be aware that this guy (was he even in the state legislature then?) was going to run for President 17 years later. I bet they put their top PR guys on it. Exactly how many people do you think studied the publicity material years later? If Obama even saw it, it was probably after it went out, where doing the correction would have just pointed out how incompetent the guy who wrote it was, not to mention being expensive. And who do you think would have cared? Does astrology make your brain itch also? Because it is more believable than this being part of the great conspiracy. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2012, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trival-pursuit-kenyan-edition/622328/33 "2012-05-18T20:55:59Z")
T) he product of the same amazing document forgery system that faked Obama’s birth certificate and false Honolulu newspaper birth notice. It doesn’t have a political agenda, it just springs into action every time an Obama document appears. ---
**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, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trival-pursuit-kenyan-edition/622328/34 "2012-05-18T23:41:44Z")
> [@gamerunknown](#): > > Which means your position is either D (an amended version which doesn’t include the provisions apologising for birther nonsense) or F according to the OP. In all honesty, I think you can agree that if this were common knowledge before the 2008 elections, the birthers would have added it to their pathetic arsenal then and it would have been refuted just as quickly. Come to think of it, with all that turning over rocks and interviewing Obama’s Kenyan relations and dissecting the published BC for signs of forgery, how did they **miss** this?! Epic fail, Orly! We’re disappointed in you! :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![EddyTeddyFreddy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eddyteddyfreddy/32/18796_2.png) [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2012, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trival-pursuit-kenyan-edition/622328/35 "2012-05-19T01:33:53Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Come to think of it, with all that turning over rocks and interviewing Obama’s Kenyan relations and dissecting the published BC for signs of forgery, how did they **miss** this?! Epic fail, Orly! We’re disappointed in you! :dubious: Or, to put it in lolspeak: U)R [DOIN IT WRONG](http://memedump.com/d/1398-7/ur-doin-it-wrong-08.jpg) [ORLY](http://i1.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/000/015/orly.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2012, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trival-pursuit-kenyan-edition/622328/36 "2012-05-19T02:40:27Z")
> [@Sicks\_Ate](#): > > It was, after all, right there in the Huffington Post, an outlet known for it’s skepticism of Obama. [shrug] It has more objectivity and much, much more credibility than WND, at any rate. ---
**Author:** ![Kolga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e56c9b/32.png) [@Kolga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kolga)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2012, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trival-pursuit-kenyan-edition/622328/37 "2012-05-19T04:15:07Z")
V) ery stupid people keep using very easily-explained events to craft a story of some sort of conspiracy to put Obama in the White House that started in the delivery room at the moment of his birth. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2012, 7:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trival-pursuit-kenyan-edition/622328/38 "2012-05-19T07:59:43Z")
W) ell, looks like this was a tempest in a teapot. ---
**Author:** ![What\_the](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f4b2a3/32.png) [@What\_the](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_the)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2012, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trival-pursuit-kenyan-edition/622328/39 "2012-05-19T12:06:30Z")
How the heck does something like that show up now? Whether it be the evil birther types or the fair and balanced media, is anybody doing their job ? What would you all think if the latter had the booklet but didn’t think it was news-worthy? ---
**Author:** ![theR](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/977dab/32.png) [@theR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/theR)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2012, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trival-pursuit-kenyan-edition/622328/40 "2012-05-19T12:41:13Z")
> [@What\_the](#): > > How the heck does something like that show up now? > > Whether it be the evil birther types or the fair and balanced media, is anybody doing their job ? > > What would you all think if the latter had the booklet but didn’t think it was news-worthy? If anyone had the booklet and didn’t think it was newsworthy I would agree. The bottom line is that this booklet could say Obama was born on Mars and it wouldn’t matter since he has a valid Hawaii birth certificate. The birth certificate proves this booklet was incorrect, so anyone that thinks the booklet is correct is most likely willfully ignorant or intentionally dishonest about the topic. The only way it is newsworthy is if one thinks it’s appropriate to try and convey lies or inaccuracies as true. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trival-pursuit-kenyan-edition/622328.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trival-pursuit-kenyan-edition/622328.md?page=3)