Dinesh D’Souza is at it again. This time he’s taken his the-president-is-evil book-touting act on the road—to San Francisco, of all places.
It’s beyond me why the San Francisco Chronicle would print such garbage, especially in the wake of his Forbes failure. (h/t to Tom Hilton on Twitter)
D’Souza’s whole column is about how Obama is a liar because a childhood anecdote in Dreams From My Father may not be completely accurate. And it lets him wildly stretch to speculate that Obama may have gotten it from a, you guessed it, African anticolonialist. This time, it’s not his father, it’s Frantz Fanon of Algeria.
Naturally, the anecdote D’Souza zeroes in on is Obama’s horror at reading a story in Life magazine about black people who had lightened their skin chemically. Life says it never printed it.
Aha, says D’Souza! (emphasis mine):
Here, I believe, is where Obama got his skin treatment anecdote. He found it in Fanon and altered the setting and the facts to invent a personal experience instructive about American racism. Barack Obama, meet Tawana Brawley. Obama’s bogus racial incident is reminiscent of the Brawley case, in which Brawley fabricated a story about being a victim of racist assault. But in a way Obama’s lie is worse. Brawley’s fabrications were the product of a troubled 15-year-old, while Obama’s were delivered as an adult in a book that, in some respects, served as his presidential campaign manifesto. Because this is not a trivial deception, we cannot let it pass: It is time for Obama to come clean.
Did he say Tawana Brawley? Yes, he did.
I can totally see the analogy to Brawley (oh, and we might as well say it: Al Sharpton’s) fake-rape allegations in 1987, dude. I’m wondering why D’Souza didn’t use a more recent analogy. Say, Bethany Storro. Hmmm.
Again, D’Souza has never heard of Occam’s Razor. Actually, I’m sure he has, he just hopes you haven’t so you’ll buy his insane books. Seems to me, the likelier explanation for Obama’s error is that he was trying to remember something from when he was nine years old—some thirty years later.
Gee, I read Barry Switzer say “sumbitch” in the Tulsa World back in 1986 and it gave me a new cuss word to say in the fourth grade.
But don’t hold me to it. It could have been the Tulsa Tribune. Or… was it Bootlegger’s Boy???
It’s not like it isn’t well documented that people have long tried to lighten their skin to fit in better. Have a look at this modern-day Chicago Tribune investigation about the lengths they’ll go to do it.
Again, we’ve seen clearly what D’Souza is up to with “otherizing” Obama. The press shouldn’t give him the platform to do it.
— Further Reading:
Forbes’ Shameful Piece on Obama as the “Other”: The worst kind of smear journalism by Dinesh D’Souza
Dinesh D’Souza Digs Himself in Deeper: Some more criticism of Forbes’s disastrous Obama cover story
Audit Notes: Forbes Compares Obama to Lenin, Racist BS, Some Sanity
Audit Notes: D’Souza and Forbes Edition
Mr Chittum, looks like you have found your very own Emmanuel Goldstein!
#1 Posted by Mike H, CJR on Fri 24 Sep 2010 at 04:25 PM
Freedom of the press has always belonged exclusively to those who could afford one. Just as reading Clearly Mr. D'Souza is a profitable investment for somebody, as is our good friend Mike H.
#2 Posted by Jonathan, CJR on Fri 24 Sep 2010 at 05:21 PM
Deja vu all over again. This is exactly what the right and the mainstream press did to Bill Clinton. Only it was the Wall Street Journal back then, not Forbes. And it was the New York Times, not San Francisco Chronicle. Just wait, it will get worse.
Good on you for calling it out, Mr. Chittum.
#3 Posted by James, CJR on Fri 24 Sep 2010 at 08:12 PM
Thanks for your column. I had just read the piece in the Chronicle and was reeling from the reductive logic. D'Souza is indeed outlandish. Perhaps that's part of his shtick. But like his buddies Ann Coulter et al, he preys on the worst in us.
#4 Posted by Terry, CJR on Fri 24 Sep 2010 at 10:19 PM
Don't you understand that this is correct time to get the credit loans, which would realize your dreams.
#5 Posted by TRACEYEVERETT34, CJR on Sat 25 Sep 2010 at 12:27 AM
It took me approximately 30 seconds to find an ad that did run in Ebony in the 1960s featuring skin whitening: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vieilles_annonces/4040131639/
And a blog post with tons more ads:
http://www.postbourgie.com/2010/01/11/the-ebony-archives-my-skin-was-once-dreadfully-drab/
I realize that Mr. D'Souza cannot be asked to do research, but come now. I would be shocked if Obama had never been exposed to the concept of skin whitening if he was reading Black magazines in the 60s.
#6 Posted by Thalia, CJR on Sat 25 Sep 2010 at 04:43 AM
And what exactly is your resume? Could someone please attack DSouza's article based on the content of his analysis and facts instead of his political affiliations. The NY Times, Huff Post, Wa Post, and this publication all fail to take the time to address his analysis. instead they paint with a broad brush and engage mostly in smear tactics instead of detailing piece by piece what parts of his article are incorrect and why.
#7 Posted by Brian Woodward, CJR on Sat 25 Sep 2010 at 01:37 PM
Nice research by Thalia (above). My thought was along a slightly different line (although I don't know how to check it).
Life was an extremely popular magazine back then, widely read AND very respected. The idea that Life even in the 1960's would carry such an ad does not fit my memory of the publication back then. Of course, my memory would only apply to an American edition of Life.
Is it possible that they also published foreign editions? Editions that might be archived separately from whatever archives were checked for this? Editions that would appropriatelyly be supported by a different advertizing base?
#8 Posted by Benedict@Large, CJR on Sat 25 Sep 2010 at 06:54 PM
He probably read it in Ebony Magazine, whose cover looked exactly like Life. When a white man darkened his skin to write a book about being Negro (a polite term back then) nobody complained; it may even be the source of the president's "horror".
There were no foreign edition of Life, no different editions for different regions. And basically, D'Souza's book is similar in tone to most NY Times newspaper stories about President Bush, only they made believe they were objective reporters, and Mr. D'Souza is written a political argument.
#9 Posted by Carl R. , CJR on Sat 25 Sep 2010 at 07:47 PM
Mr. Chittum apologizes for Obama: Again, D’Souza has never heard of Occam’s Razor... ... Seems to me, the likelier explanation for Obama’s error is that he was trying to remember something from when he was nine years old—some thirty years later.
padikiller responds: So when Obama says something that isn't true... It's not a lie, but merely an "error"...
And reason demands that we attribute the "error" to the cause that "seems" (from Mr. Chittum's perspective) to be most "likely"... Because... Because.... Because Mr. Chittum says so, at least when it comes to cleaning up liberal "errors".
Gotcha, Mr. Chittum...
Please show me a single example where you (or any of your "professional journailst" cohorts) have demanded such analysis to explain the "errors" in the mistatements of a single conservative. Ever. Once.
You guys are nothing but political hacks. You'd pimp your sisters to run cover for Obama. Pitiful.
#10 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Sun 26 Sep 2010 at 07:31 AM
Ah, another installment from Mr. Chittum on the sins of D'Souza.
Mr. Chittum wants to know, "Why is the mainstream press giving this guy such a prominent platform?"
And I want to know why CJR is giving Mr. Chittum this platform. Why must newspapers answer to Mr. Chittum because they permitted a prominent neoconservative a forum?
And I'd also like to know whether CJR would be publishing this column if it weren't about Mr. Obama, the media's candidate for president.
In its installment on hit piece the New York Times published about John McCain, CJR assured that sorting out the facts were "tricky."
Nothing tricky here, though.
And I don't even like D'Souza.
#11 Posted by Newspaperman, CJR on Mon 27 Sep 2010 at 12:03 PM
If the cover story had been in Mother Jones, and had been laudatory, rather than critical - you know, how Obama was trying to carry on the spirit of the 1960s, anti-racist, anti-colonial, speculating that his family/racial background was the source of his left-leaning policy proposals, etc. - does anyone on this thread think CJR and Ryan would be pursuing this one piece of journalism and its author with such zeal?
It's not as though there have not been thinly sourced and speculative hit pieces on Republican figures, including presidents. It's not as though left-leaning figures have not committed much worse journalistic crimes, such as plagiarism of another's work. You have to ask questions such as the above to get the context that is sadly missing in Ryan's campaign. It's one thing to take d'Souza to task over his piece. It's another to act as though it is a sin of unprecedented evil, for which the author should be sanctioned by 'respectable' mainstream news organizations.
#12 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Mon 27 Sep 2010 at 12:34 PM
Good points, Mr. Richard. It's clear why Mr. Chittum is going after Mr. D'Souza, and it isn't because Mr. D'Souza's theory is a bit wacky. It's because his wacky theory attacks Obama. Had the piece in question been written by Bill Ayers about George Bush, Mr. Chittum would no doubt be pondering other matters.
#13 Posted by Newspaperman, CJR on Tue 28 Sep 2010 at 11:22 AM
hey, newspaperman. Try to imagine a mainstream publication like Forbes running a cover story by Bill Ayers on Bush. Can't do it?
False equivalence, youze guys.
#14 Posted by Ryan Chittum, CJR on Tue 28 Sep 2010 at 12:35 PM
hey, newspaperman. Try to imagine a mainstream publication like Forbes running a cover story by Bill Ayers on Bush. Can't do it?
False equivalence, youze guys.
So now D'Souza is on par with a terrorist ... what was that about a false equivalence?
#15 Posted by Mike H, CJR on Tue 28 Sep 2010 at 12:52 PM
Mike H,
I didn't attempt the equivalence. Newspaperman did.
#16 Posted by Ryan Chittum, CJR on Tue 28 Sep 2010 at 01:24 PM
The problems with memory and its plasticity are very extensively documented (see e.g., Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, e.g.) Moreover, people can be absolutely sincere about the veracity of their likely false memories (See Dr. Robert Burton "On Being Certain." So as an initial matter I think we have to get past the notion that every time a politician says something that turns out to be wrong in some detail that we question their veracity. That doesn't mean we don't expose the inaccuracy. But in many cases it is a leap from discovering something is inaccurate to concluding that the inaccuracy was intentional. This applies to left and right. That said, what makes D'Souza's claims so outrageous and it surprising that a respectable news organization would continue to treat him as a serious commentator is that this inferences are so incredibly strained and tenuous that they appear to belong more to the tinfoil hat/conspiracy theory than that of real credibility. Obama is influenced by a father he seldom saw and who abandoned him basically? Not impossible but implausible. And "anti-colonialist" is a *bad* thing? Weren't the Framers "anti-colonialists"? With respect to this specific charge - Obama undoubtedly saw some story or ad about skin whitening somewhere. You can find them today. The significance is on his own process of coming to understand the social meaning of race in the culture. That seems pretty obvious. But I suppose one of the benefits of publishing material like this is that in its tenuousness it exposes the strain of hysteria in some of the anti-Obama polemicists.
#17 Posted by Tamara Piety, CJR on Tue 28 Sep 2010 at 03:13 PM
What I don't understand is why D'Souza failed to mention Alinsky.
I am also amused by the idea that Obama used to go to a barber shop where, instead of old Life magazines, dogeared copies of Frantz Fanon were left lying around.
Hey, it could have happened, and that's good enough for the rightwing hit machine.
#18 Posted by Harry Eagar, CJR on Tue 28 Sep 2010 at 03:30 PM
I would guess that the the NY Times' sleazy 2008 'National Enquirer'-level front-pager alleging an affair by McCain with a lobbyist is, in fact, more than equivalent to the Forbes story, since it purported to discuss actual events, rather than just speculate about attitudes. Which article would you rather have had done to you? Be honest for once, posers who (cough) attack myths like the 'right-wing hit machine' - which story would you rather have had written about you or a loved one?
#19 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Tue 28 Sep 2010 at 04:58 PM
Wow, Columbia Journalism Review. I'm trying to make the tax dollars that fund this operation make some kind of productive sense, but it's really not possible.
Trying to make sense of tenure at todays (tax supported) Universities, and that also just does not work. What goes on for education today at a place like Columbia is a travisty for what was intended. This cannot end well for either Columbia, its misguided students or the United States which is suffering the loss of productive creation from what is supposed to come from the time that appears to be sorely wasted attending the University. Obama is what he is, and it is now very clear that he got where he is through deception (you know that awful Islamic term taqiyya).
The attempt to diminish the siginifcance of D'Souza's findings is rather amaturish and basically pathetic given the detail he has researched and provided. You can snip around the edges and whine that someone would (and Could) be this revealing and damaging to this manchurian interloper occuping the Oval office,but make no mistake the jig is up and those of us who still regard ourselves as Americans will be heard from in certain terms very soon. I'm expecting that to include a new order for funding universities.
#20 Posted by Buzz, CJR on Thu 30 Sep 2010 at 09:10 PM