posted September 14, 2008 06:55 PM            

They are not quoting fully from the book.

Misleading e-mail: From Audacity of Hope: "I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction."

Actual quote from "The Audacity of Hope" [pg. 261]: Of course, not all my conversations in immigrant communities follow this easy pattern. In the wake of 9/11, my meetings with Arab and Pakistani Americans, for example, have a more urgent quality, for the stories of detentions and FBI questioning and hard stares from neighbors have shaken their sense of security and belonging. They have been reminded that the history of immigration in this country has a dark underbelly; they need specific assurances that their citizenship really means something, that America has learned the right lessons from the Japanese internments during World War II, and that I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction. Obama did not say he would side with "the Muslims," which could easily be read as meaning he would side with the world's Muslim population even if it meant working outside the best interests of the United States. He said he would side with "them," referring back to his mention of immigrant communities and specifically to "Arab and Pakistani Americans." Furthermore, he was speaking of an "ugly direction" like the mass internment of Japanese Americans.

This false quote goes hand in hand with the equally false rumor that Obama is a Muslim.

Misleading e-mail: From Dreams of My Father: "I ceased to advertise my mother's race at the age of 12 or 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites."
Actual quote from "Dreams from My Father" [pg. xv]: When people who don't know me well, black or white, discover my background (and it is usually a discovery, for I ceased to advertise my mother's race at the age of twelve or thirteen, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites), I see the split-second adjustments they have to make, the searching of my eyes for some telltale sign. They no longer know who I am. Privately, they guess at my troubled heart, I suppose - the mixed blood, the divided soul, the ghostly image of the tragic mulatto trapped between two worlds. And if I were to explain that no, the tragedy is not mine, or at least not mine alone, it is yours, sons and daughters of Plymouth Rock and Ellis Island, it is yours, children of Africa, it is the tragedy of both my wife's six-year-old cousin and his white first grade classmates, so that you need not guess at what troubles me, it's on the nightly news for all to see, and that if we could acknowledge at least that much then the tragic cycle begins to break down...well, I suspect that I sound incurably naive, wedded to lost hopes, like those Communists who peddle their newspapers on the fringes of various college towns. Or worse, I sound like I'm trying to hide from myself.
On its own, the quote can be interpreted as Obama rejecting his white heritage and, by extension, the entire white population. But, in full context, the statement is part of Obama's assessment of "black or white" individuals' first impressions of him as a person of mixed race.

And finally ...
Misleading e-mail: From Dreams of My Father : ; "It remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names."

Actual quote from "Dreams from My Father" [pg. 100-101]: To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night, in the dorms, we discussed necolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism, and patriarchy. When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake, we were resisting bourgeois society's stifling constraints. We weren't indifferent or careless or insecure. We were alienated. But this strategy alone couldn't provide the distance I wanted, from Joyce or my past. After all, there were thousands of so-called campus radicals, most of them white and tenured and happily tolerated. No, it remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names.
On its own, the quote makes Obama appear racially militant. Whereas, in full context, the quote illustrates Obama's confusion over his race and cultural heritage. This is emphasized in the preceding paragraph, where Obama describes himself as someone compensating for insecurity in his "racial credentials."

- Emi Kolawole and Brooks Jackson

http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/did_obama_write_that_he_would_stand.html

I wish people would stop taking somebody's book and twist and try to make it look like he written something else. Stuff like that ****** me off. Especially if it has to do personal journeys as well as racial matters. This email smear crap is definitely trying to misrepresent a person's racial views when he actually acknowledges and respects his mixed ancestry. I hate people try to misrepresent others...especially when it's a racial thing

if any of you have doubts, I scan the actual pages of the book and show you that the stuff that he wrote has been twisted into emails smearing him.

This is a book about his journey to find himself. It really ****** me off that people state false things about his book,misquote his book,and leaving stuff out that it makes it a whole different meaning.

posted September 14, 2008 09:21 PM            

No need to misquote Barack Hussein O'Bomber. He's clearly a Marxist Socialist, his friends and associates are Marxists, his minister is an America hating racist Marxist, even Bill Ayers, who O'Bomber tried to pass off as just a neighbor who O'Bomber says has "mainstream American" ideas...is a revolutionary domestic terrorist Marxist. I suppose that to a Marxist like O'Bomber, people who blow up the Pentagon, blow up police headquarters and attempt to overthrow the United States government are just "mainstream America."

posted September 15, 2008 01:20 AM            

What an embarrassment to America he will be if he is elected. But then I may be wrong.
Perhaps America likes honesty. Especially if it comes from a politician