Obama’s biography in the booklet is as follows (image and text below):
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.
The booklet, which is thirty-six pages long, is printed in blue ink
(and, on the cover, silver/grey ink), using offset lithography. It
purports to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of Acton & Dystel,
which was founded in 1976.
Front cover (outside) - note Barack Obama listed in alphabetical order
Front cover (inside)
Jay Acton no longer represents Obama. However, Jane Dystel still lists Obama as a client on her agency's website.
According to the booklet itself, the text was edited by Miriam Goderich, who has since become Dystel's partner at Dystel & Goderich,
an agency founded in 1994. Breitbart News attempted to reach Goderich
by telephone several times over several days. Her calls are screened by
an automated service that requires callers to state their name and
company, which we did. She never answered.
The design of the booklet was undertaken by Richard Bellsey, who has
since closed his business. Bellsey, reached by telephone, could not
recall the exact details of the booklet, but told Breitbart News that it
"sounds like one of our jobs, like I did for [Acton & Dystel]
twenty years ago or more."
The parade of authors alongside Obama in the booklet includes
politicians, such as former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill; sports
legends, such as Joe Montana and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar; and numerous
Hollywood celebrities.
The reverse side of the page that features Barack Obama includes
former Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader and early-1990s
"boy band" pop sensation New Kids On the Block.
Acton, who spoke to Breitbart News by telephone, confirmed precise
details of the booklet and said that it cost the agency tens of
thousands of dollars to produce.
He indicated that while "almost nobody" wrote his or her own
biography, the non-athletes in the booklet, whom "the agents deal[t]
with on a daily basis," were "probably" approached to approve the text
as presented.
Dystel did not respond to numerous requests for comment, via email
and telephone. Her assistant told Breitbart News that Dystel "does not
answer questions about Obama."
The errant Obama biography in the Acton & Dystel booklet does not
contradict the authenticity of Obama's birth certificate. Moreover,
several contemporaneous accounts of Obama’s background describe Obama as having been born in Hawaii.
The biography does, however, fit a pattern in which Obama--or the
people representing and supporting him--manipulate his public persona.
David Maraniss's forthcoming biography of Obama has reportedly confirmed, for example, that a girlfriend Obama described in Dreams from My Father was, in fact, an amalgam of several separate individuals.
In addition, Obama and his handlers have a history of redefining his
identity when expedient. In March 2008, for example, he famously declared:
"I can no more disown [Jeremiah Wright] than I can disown the black
community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother."
Several weeks later, Obama left Wright's church--and, according to Edward Klein's new biography, The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House, allegedly attempted to persuade Wright not to "do any more public speaking until after the November [2008] election" (51).
Obama has been known frequently to
fictionalize aspects of his own life. During his 2008 campaign, for
instance, Obama claimed that his dying mother had fought with insurance
companies over coverage for her cancer treatments.
That turned out to be untrue, but Obama has repeated the story--which even the Washington Post called "misleading"--in a campaign video for the 2012 election.
The Acton & Dystel biography
could also reflect how Obama was seen by his associates, or transitions
in his own identity. He is said, for instance, to have cultivated an "international" identity until well into his adulthood, according to Maraniss.
Regardless of the reason for
Obama's odd biography, the Acton & Dystel booklet raises new
questions as part of ongoing efforts to understand Barack Obama--who,
despite four years in office remains a mystery to many Americans, thanks
to the mainstream media.
Larry O'Connor contributed to this report.
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