Obama Literary Agent Website Bio said “Born in Kenya” for 16 Years

I have been accused, as have many “birthers” have, of being racist because we dared to ask for Mr. Obama’s Hawaii birth certificate. The claim is that no on ever asked any other candidate to prove where they were born – so clearly the need to see the actual certificate was based on racism. I pointed out that no other candidate had indicated that they were born in a foreign country for over 16 years. I was accused of “making up” this fact. I did the following screen shots to prove that I was stating a FACT.

Obama had a bio published by his literary agent Acton & Dystel in 1991 that clearly states he was born in Kenya. I know we have heard the following disclaimer from Miriam Goderich in 2012:

Miriam Goderich edited the text of the bio; she is now a partner at the Dystel & Goderich agency, which lists Obama as one of its current clients.

“This was nothing more than a fact checking error by me–an agency assistant at the time,” Goderich wrote in an emailed statement to Yahoo News. “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.”

It is clear that she is referring to the  1991 brochure published by her company. See full text here:

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/born-kenya-obamas-literary-agent-misidentified-birthplace-1991/story?id=16372566

There are two problems here. First, it is industry standard procedure for an author to provide their own bio. After all, they are the writer, and who knows them better than themselves. And even Miriam herself says that she “edited the text of the bio”  and “fact checked it”. Semantics – she never says she wrote it. In fact, on the Dystel & Goderich website, part of the “non fiction submission guidelines” is a “formal narrative bio of the author”. http://www.dystel.com/nonfiction-proposal-guidelines/  It seems logical that requirement would have been in place in 1991.

The second problem is that it is not just a brochure published in 1991. The same bio was present on the Acton & Dystel and later Dystel & Goderich website starting in 1998. And it stayed there, and was edited during that time. It added that he was was the Junior Democratic Senator from Illinois, and that he was also the Keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic Convention. It said “born in Kenya” until April of 2007, even though someone was obviously very diligent about updating it to add important new details.

Does anyone believe that Miriam Goderich was just updating all her clients bios for years, without once asking for an approval or asking for  permission to make the changes? I for one DO NOT think that she did that. Nor do I think that Mr. Obama never ONCE looked at his bio in 16 years. I believe that he was aware of it and was concerned with keeping is up to date and accurate. I believe he wrote it and maintained the “born in Kenya” until such time as it became important to have NOT been born in Kenya. From April 2007 on, he was “born in Hawaii”.

Just look at the screen shots. Does it make sense for anyone to leave inaccurate information on the internet for 16 years? These are from a very interesting site called archive.org – The Wayback Machine. Snapshots of web pages over the years have been preserved there. These are just some of hundreds of dates I could have used from the Dytsel & Goderich website over the last 15 years.

June  27,1998 – Born in Kenya

September 1, 2005 – Junior Democratic Senator and Keynote speaker are added – still born in Kenya

March 26, 2007 – still “Born in Kenya”

July 27, 2007 – A miracle – he was reborn in Hawaii – AND he’s a presidential candidate – how coincidental!  And his poor Dad is no longer a Finance Minister. How sad – just a regular fellow from a small town in Kenya…

So there you have it.  Does anybody out there know anyone else over the age of 6 who has  allowed themselves to be incorrectly represented as having been born in a foreign country for a decade and half? Anyone Googling Barack Obama would have found this bio and would have no reason the doubt he was born in Kenya. This is why so many people are confused about where he was born.