Courtesy of David Maraniss' new book, we now know that yet another key prop of Barack Obama’s identity is false: His Kenyan grandfather was not brutally tortured or even non-brutally detained by his British colonial masters. The composite gram'pa joins an ever-swelling cast of characters from Barack’s "memoir" who, to put it discreetly, differ somewhat in reality from their bit parts in the grand Obama narrative. The best friend at school portrayed in Obama’s autobiography as "a symbol of young blackness" was, in fact, half Japanese, and not a close friend. The white girlfriend he took to an off-Broadway play that prompted an angry post-show exchange about race never saw the play, dated Obama in an entirely different time zone, and had no such world-historically significant conversation with him. His Indonesian step-grandfather, supposedly killed by Dutch soldiers during his people’s valiant struggle against colonialism, met his actual demise when he "fell off a chair at his home while trying to hang drapes."But ask not for whom the drapes hang, they hang for thee: today it’s curtains for Barack Obama, and curtain up for Donald Trump.
Oddly enough, The Great Falls Tribune chooses to mark the occasion with one final, laborious "fact-check" of Obama "myths" and rather prissily includes one of my readers' jokes:
And Obama didn’t tell his supporters that "we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world" and then ask them to "join with me as we try to change it." That quote, too, was intended as a joke, according to former National Review contributor Mark Steyn, who said it was sent to him by a reader as "an all-purpose stump speech for the 2008 campaign."The Steyn column the Great Falls guys link to is this one from nine years ago:
A few months back, just after the New Hampshire primary, a Canadian reader of mine — John Gross of Quebec — sent me an all-purpose stump speech for the 2008 campaign: "My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. I hope you'll join with me as we try to change it."That’s true. Obama accepting the Democrat nomination:I thought this was so cute, I posted it on "The Corner." Whereupon one of those Internetty-type things happened, and three links and a Google search later the line was being attributed not to my correspondent but to Senator Obama, and a few weeks after that I started getting emails from reporters from Florida to Oregon asking if I could recall at which campaign stop the senator in fact uttered these words. And I'd patiently write back and explain that they're John Gross’s words, and that not even Barack would be dumb enough to say such a thing in public. Yet last week his demand in his victory speech that we "come together to remake this great nation" came awful close.
This was the moment — this was the time — when we came together to remake this great nation …As I said at the time: If it’s so "great", why do we have to "remake" it? He basically lifted John Gross' Canuck joke and reworded it with a straight face. Still, one appreciates the touchiness of The Great Falls Tribune about this line. As I observed two years ago:
If he were working for the other side, what exactly would he be doing differently?Especially after this hectic post-election finale, culminating in the springing from gaol of Chelsea Manning, I think I'll stand on that: my epitaph for the Obama years.
A New Dawn, A New Don, by Mark Steyn, SteynOnline, January 19, 2017