"Born in Kenya"? Different story 17 years later

Chances are you've already seen this -- it's gone viral, as they say -- but just in case you didn't, here's proof that the Prez hisself was telling the world, back in 1991, that he was not born in the USA.

And -- get this -- it's not just a question of being born in a territory that had not then been admitted to statehood. The booklet pictured says Obama was born in Kenya.

Did da man hisself write that? No. It was written by a literary agent, plugging a forthcoming book by a then-young, otherwise unknown former president of the Harvard Law Review. But where would the agent have got that information, if not from the author himself?

But, you may well ask, why would Obama say that of himself? What was he thinking? Obviously running for the presidensity wouldn't have been at the top of his agenda. Either that or he hadn't read the Constitution very carefully. Perhaps he -- or his agent -- thought that it sounded more cool and worldly to be born in colonial Kenya than in Honolulu. Citizen of the world and all that.

For clarification, let's ask the agent! That would be Miriam Goderich, now a partner at Dystel & Goderich, an agency which has among its clients... wait for it... one Barack Hussein Obama. Anyway, here's what the totally unbiased Ms Goderich told Yahoo News:
"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."

Of course! A simple mistake! Why would we think anything else? But, errr, would Mr. Obama not have checked the blurb written by Ms Goderich before it appeared in print? Would it be churlish to suggest that he could have corrected Miriam's error, had he wished to do so?

If that be the case, then ABC News is leading the pack of churls. They call the publication of the blurb "evidence--not of the President's foreign origin, but that Barack Obama's public persona has perhaps been presented differently at different times."

And, Walt would add, for different purposes. Just like his "principles".