Quotes from Obama's books

[Uncle Ben]

Take from it whatever you like:

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.'

From Dreams of My Father : 'I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother's race.'

From Dreams of My Father:'There was something about him that made me wary, a little too sure of himself, maybe. And white.'

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.'

From Dreams of My Father: 'I never emulate white men and brown men whose fates didn't speak to my own. It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa , that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself , the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela.'

From Audacity of Hope: 'I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.'

 

[HKuser]

Racist, phony little puke. The Obamatrons will be here to attack shortly.

 

[mountainclmbr]

How about the quote that in college he sought to take classes from the Marxist professors.

 

[JuanCarlos]

Boy, I sure love when people show up feeling the burning need to post forwards out of their email inbox. Next time, I recommend fact-checking it before you post it. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but not everything that your buddies (or their buddies, or their buddies' buddies...god, I love email forwards) is true. I know, shocking.

There's also no Santa Claus.

Specifically:

From Dreams of My Father : 'I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother's race.'

No such line in either book. Nor has he said any such thing. It's the words of somebody writing an article about him, but rephrased into the first person. In other words, a lie. Good job repeating it.

From Audacity of Hope: 'I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.'

Another passage that does not exist. It is an extreme paraphrase of a portion that does, however, though it's taken wildly enough out of context so as to pervert the meaning beyond recognition. Here, try the actual quote.

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.

So, Barack Obama is against the internment of Muslims. Is this a radical idea?


I guess we're subscribing to the Meatloaf philosophy, where two out of three ain't bad. (Or, rather, four out of six)


The other four at least seem to be accurate quotes. Granted, there's context involved but not so much that they're worth trying to defend. I'd just suggest that next time if you want to make Obama look bad, it's easy enough using the truth. You'll look a lot less ignorant doing that than spreading lies that are easily debunked with about three seconds spent on google.

Besides which, if I wanted to read your forwards, I'd ask to be on your email list. It's bad enough reading the crap my parents and in-laws insist on forwarding me, I don't need to read the dregs of your inbox as well.

 

[wingman]

While I don't care for either candidate I did have some "hope" Obama may
bring a welcome change however after months of reading and research I
will simply go vote McCain to vote against Obama as he is certainly not what
America needs at this time.

 

[Uncle Ben]

Juan, just add me (and your parents and in-laws) to your "ignore" list and you won't have to read our forwards.

 

[JuanCarlos]

Well, aside from my personal preferences, drive-by postings (which yours certainly qualifies as) are verboten in this forum. And posting fallacious email forwards (or just provably false lies in general) is also...shall we say, heavily frowned upon.

EDIT: Also, since I made the claim that the quotes were inaccurate, I should probably provide at least one source. Note that this is not the only source that three seconds of googling turned up. Again, cut-and-pasting from your email inbox is considered bad form on any forum I've been on (and is specifically against the rules here). But if you feel absolutely compelled to do so, you're less likely to en up looking foolish if you poke around for ten seconds to make sure it's at least true.

EDIT: And since teaching can be more effective than taunting, I'll tell you why I'm not exaggerating on the whole "three seconds of googling" claim. The key to debunking an email forward is simply to quote a portion, and throw it into google. Assuming it has made the rounds (as this one did, back in May at the latest) you'll get a page or two of hits, at the least...likely more. Click a couple that look relevant, and you'll figure out pretty quickly if it's true. In this case I went with the most damning quote of the bunch, the part about "siding with the Muslims." It was certainly the most outlandish (none of the others struck me as something Obama wouldn't say), and it got bonus points for the implication that he's a Muslim (popular in the email forward community).

Punched it into google in its entirety, and up come the hits. Amusingly, the top hit debunking it was a conservative blog. As in, anti-Obama. But see, some people realize that spreading lies through backchannel means is harmful to the entire political process, and something that knows no party. Just ask John McCain's illegitimate black baby.

There's more than enough truth to blast Obama with. You don't even need to dig. It's right there on the surface. So there's no reason to cut and paste lies instead.

Of course, I'm also just the kind of person who thinks I'm responsible for the things I repeat. I figure if you repeat a lie it's either through ignorance or malice, and neither is a "good thing" nor anything to be proud of.

 

[Uncle Ben]

Mountainclmbr: after doing some JuanCarlos-inspired research, I came across that quote you referred to as well, and that one is not taken out of context. Here's the exact quote:

"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."

I happen to believe that Obama has always chosen his friends carefully, but when we point out those (radical) friends now, somehow he never knew what they believed, or he was a friend to them in spite of their radical beliefs.

To view the scopes article about this email forward and entire quotes, go to this link: http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/ownwords.asp

Doing research on Obama will not serve to help defend him much, rather it will dig him in deeper. So thanks for the tip, I truly will keep it in mind in the future before posting, and I expect that I will find even more than what I was originally looking for.

 

[Al Norris]

As was indicated, this is a cut-n-paste drive-by post.

It is also an unattributed "pass around" email, thoroughly debunked by any number of means.

Closed.