Barack Lies About His Own Grandmother

Updates below.

I was taking a break, and I'll go back to it, but this is too disgusting for words--Barack Obama lies about his own grandmother. He said in his speech that she had engaged in stereotypes that made him cringe, and equated her to the foul-mouthed, hate-filled conspiracy theorizing of his Rev. Wright. This gave the impression that his white grandmother had uttered a racial epithet, otherwise how could you even begin to compare the two? But here is what the story was, as cited in his book, with the interpretation of the brilliant and nuanced Barack Obama. See what you think of his judgment of the incident--judge for yourself. I'm lifting the whole thing from Scott at Powerline yesterday, because it's too important and I don't want you to miss this:

Yesterday I referred to the false equivalencies in Obama's extenuation of, and attempt to change the subject from, the fulsome Jeremiah Wright. I focused on the false equivalence Obama drew between his grandmother and Wright. Mickey Kaus meticulously teases out a number of other false equivalencies in the speech. Steve Sailer contrasts Obama's account of his grandmother in Dreams From My Father with the account in his speech. Sailer concludes that Obama threw his grandmother "under the wheels of the BS express." Jim Hoft has compiled a Grandma Dunham roundup. (Thanks to reader Julian Biggs for the tip to Sailer's post.)

PAUL adds: All of these links are very much worth following, and Sailer's is indispensable. According to Sailer, in yesterday's speech, Obama distorted the facts surrounding his grandmother's comment about being afraid of black men. In the speech, the black men she was afraid of merely passed her in the street; in the book a black man panhandled her very aggressively at a bus stop.

It's bad enough, as Scott has said, to speak unfavorably about grandma (the one person in his family who consistently attended to Obama) in order to use her as a political prop. To cast her in a false light for that purpose is very low, indeed.

Fortunately, Sailer's post contains comic relief, albeit dark, in the form of grandpa's response to grandma's distress and young Barack's effort to obtain guidance from the local African-American Communist party member.

UPDATE: I see that James Taranto elaborated on the false equivalence between Wright and Grandma Dunham yesterday afternoon in his Best of the Web Today column.

Barack Obama wants us to shut up about Rev. Wright, to shut up about questioning his judgment and his version of the "truth". Well we won't shut up. Because we can call him a liar--because it's the truth. Yes we can.

UPDATE: Peter Wehner on Barack Slick Willie Obama. The Politico talks to Pennsylvania voters:

A day after the speech, local residents were left wondering whether Obama was candid in the last week when he said he hadn’t heard any of Wright’s most objectionable remarks, but then said Tuesday that he had heard “controversial” remarks while sitting in the pews.

“He lied to Anderson Cooper,” said Rodica Mitrea, an aesthetician and immigrant from Romania, referring to an Obama interview Friday with the CNN anchor.

UPDATE: More at Gateway Pundit

UPDATE: Barack craters in the polls. The Wright Effect--Tom Bevan, RCP Blog. And this. And the right Rev. James Meeks. Barack Obama has such temperate-talking friends. And let's note one more data point in the Leftie narrative--the old commie friend of his grandfather's--somehow he doesn't usually lace that into his speeches. But the radical influence is there.

UPDATE: Kristen McQueary, the (suburban Chicago) Southtown Star, "Media Coddles Obama"[also getting play here, plus another critique of Obama and the local Chicago MSMedia]:

I am not sure whom to cast - Obama or the editors - in the role of Pepe Le Pew, the Warner Bros. skunk in a perpetual state of l'amour.

The editors seemed thrilled he visited their newspaper offices and finally answered questions he should have addressed months previously. They seemed quite satisfied with Obama's answers, although a Chicago Tribune reporter later said on "Chicago Tonight"on WTTW-TV (Channel 11) he was struck by the number of times Obama could not or would not answer questions, including how many fundraisers Rezko hosted for him throughout the years.

"(Obama's) answers actually showed he's not been truthful before on a couple of key points and couldn't and didn't answer all the questions," said Steve Rhodes, media critic and publisher of the Beachwood Reporter Web site.

HT Dan Curry, Reverse Spin.

UPDATE: Nicholas Kristof, NY Times, "Obama and Race":

Mr. Wright has indeed made some outrageous statements. But he should be judged as well by his actions — including a vigorous effort to address poverty, ill health, injustice and AIDS in his ministry. Mr. Wright has been frightfully wrong on many topics, but he was right on poverty, civil rights and compassion for AIDS victims.

Louis Farrakhan talked about self-reliance too. He also is an anti-Semite. Not good enough, Nicholas, nice try. (Kind of reminds me of Sen. Patty Murray defending Osama bin Laden after Sept. 11th--that he supported day care providers.) We take Rev. Wright at his word. Don't words mean things? And we're supposed to excuse all the conspiracy theory talk as normal:

Many white Americans seem concerned that Mr. Obama, who seems so reasonable, should enjoy the company of Mr. Wright, who seems so militant, angry and threatening. To whites, for example, it has been shocking to hear Mr. Wright suggest that the AIDS virus was released as a deliberate government plot to kill black people.

That may be an absurd view in white circles, but a 1990 survey found that 30 percent of African-Americans believed this was at least plausible.

“That’s a real standard belief,” noted Melissa Harris-Lacewell, a political scientist at Princeton (and former member of Trinity church, when she lived in Chicago).

Gee, why has Oprah reportedly left this church, hmm? And all this is the fault of the rest of America. Perhaps Sen. Obama should address a few home truths to his base.

Dan Balz, WaPo, "Will the Answer Outlive Questions?":

By enlarging the discussion, he hoped to defuse what was most dangerous to his political aspirations: his long association with a prominent figure who has said things that many Americans -- white and black -- find repulsive.

It's still repulsive. And it's not going away. The rest of us are holding YOU to account Barack.

UPDATE: Joe Klein, Time:

Too often in this campaign, Obama's rhetoric has been gorgeous but abstract, ear candy for the educated. But this simple statement, equating his black surrogate father and his white surrogate mother, was something any fair-minded person could understand: almost every one of us has an uncle or a grandmother good for at least two jaw-droppers every Thanksgiving. Yes, the Senator was comparing apples and freight trains: Wright's hate speech was as public and consequential as the grandmother's stereotypes were private, but Obama came to this comparison only after he had unequivocally condemned his pastor for having "a profoundly distorted view of this country."

The rhetorical magic of the speech—what made it extraordinary—was that it was, at once, both unequivocal and healing. There were no weasel words, no Bushian platitudes or Clintonian verb-parsing.

No Joe, it ain't so. It comes back to this--Barack Obama lied about his own grandmother--showing us he has a profoundly distorted view of the truth, and of this country.

MSM--don't you dare give Obama a pass on this. This is an outrage. It's despicable behavior.

This is the Left's response to the post Sept. 11th, "we are all Americans now"--it's evolved to the liberals' latest and worst moral equivalence--"we are all racists now"--except the real racists among us.

P.S. Pity me Barack. HT Michelle.

UPDATE: Times of London, "Polls show Barack Obama damaged by link to Reverend Jeremiah Wright", affecting his electability. Barack Obama--what a jerk. And America is beginning to figure it out. Latest average here.

UPDATE: Missed this yesterday. LGF. Rev. Wright and Hamas.