Dan Crosby of the Daily Pen web site has received much criticism from me for making stuff up, and calling it fact. He’s at it again in an article that I found at Obama Release Your Records titled “PBS documentary producers find no evidence Obama attended Columbia.” The documentary Crosby refers to is the excellent video from the PBS Frontline series titled “The Choice 2012.” Crosby writes:
However, when the producers attempted to film a segment about Obama’s attendance at Columbia University, they were unable to locate even one of Obama’s classmates from New York based University and, instead, recorded an interview with an alleged “roommate” who shared a rundown New York apartment with Obama.
I went through the video for any support for this statement, and there is no commentary at all about trying to find friends or being “unable to locate” anyone. One of Obama’s Occidental classmates, Sohale Siddiqi followed Obama from Occidental to New York and was labeled “roommate” in the video in the Columbia College segment and there is a photo of Obama and Siddiqi (mentioned as and as Sadik in Obama’s autobiography). I don’t know for sure if Mr. Siddiqu was a classmate of Obama’s (although I think he was), but the documentary did not include just one person labeled “roommate”, but two of them (and never uses the word “alleged” with either). The second roommate is Phil Boerner. A major contributor (both on screen and off) to the film’s Obama segments was David Maraniss, author of Barack Obama: The Story. In that book, Maraniss makes it clear that roommate Boerner was also a fellow student at Columbia, saying:
Boerner was accustomed to moving every few years and was feeling restless after two years in Eagle Rock. “I’ve had enough of Oxy, although I will miss many good friends I made there,” he wrote in his journal. “But the school was too small, the city too inaccessible (no car), and life too easy and the students too apathetic because of this. I feel that being in New York, and at Columbia, will alter all of these ‘toos’— Columbia is larger,
Maraniss, David (2012-06-19). Barack Obama (p. 385). Simon & Schuster, Inc.. Kindle Edition.
Maraniss also mentions in his book another classmate from Columbia who remembers Obama (and shared a Spanish class with him):
Three or four times a week, when there were open hours on the court late in the day, he would walk up to the Dodge Physical Fitness Center for pickup basketball games. Ron Sunshine, a freshman during Obama’s junior year, remembered asking him one day, “How did you get so good?”
Maraniss, David (2012-06-19). Barack Obama (pp. 432-433). Simon & Schuster, Inc.. Kindle Edition.
Since Maraniss is the major source of the Obama material in the film, certainly the sources he knew were available to the producers of the film. One commentator in the film describes Obama as leading an “almost monkish existence” at Columbia with a small circle of friends, but there were friends and classmates, and girlfriends that remembered Obama, and the makers of The Choice 2012 knew that.
Crosby’s article is a work of fiction, and completely worthless.
The Brietbart web site also confirmed that Obama graduated from Columbia in 1983.
he may have read it elsewhere.
There are such articles on the web and people find it with googling.
These articles are rarely corrected later when new evidence shows up
Who may have read what?
Except that he was USING THE VIDEO for his evidence. He’s flat out fabricating implications from material not IN the evidence.
they (choice2012) did say that Obama was more isolated in New York, no “gang”.
With “locate” Crosby may mean : “get for an interview”.
the headline
> PBS DOCUMENTARY PRODUCERS FIND NO EVIDENCE OBAMA ATTENDED COLUMBIA
is still wrong. I wondered before whether the headlines are made later by someone else
who just wants to boost attention to the article
Hi doc,
I just came back from reading Dan Crosby’s article at http://thedailypen.blogspot.com
He has published there also just on the 13th his Phadreus, set both to inform on rhetoric and to entertain.
I thought you might like pure form birtherism, given the mudslinging conspiracies of late; though do not mistake it as a treatise on love.
There is also the Columbia College Class Day Program from 1983 that included Obama on the list. I wrote a blog post about this: More Proof Barack Obama Graduated from Columbia University in 1983
I went over to the website to read the article and had to leave quickly because of all of the bottom-feeders clogging up the comments…
as an aside:
How to Talk to Your 38-Year-Old Son About Birtherism
At a GOP brunch yesterday, Jason Thompson, the 38-year-old son of Wisconsin Senate candidate (and former governor) Tommy Thompson, quipped that “we have the opportunity to send President Obama back to Chicago — or Kenya.” The Thompson campaign later told Buzzfeed, “The Governor has addressed this with his son, just like any father would do. Jason Thompson said something he should not have, and he apologizes.”
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/10/how-to-talk-to-your-adult-son-about-birtherism.html
You beat me to it RC
I am convinced that birfer headlines are written they way they are because they assume that the birfers will never go to the primary source. Even the headline is phony because the article does not support the conclusion.
Why are you continually making up excuses for birther lies?
Doesn’t the fact that birthers lie all the time bother you?
where is the lie ? (except the headline)
people here tend to exaggerate, agreed ?
When you so often say “lie”, and most are just
a matter of definition, interpretation, misunderstanding, then people become sceptic
and I guess, that’s where you got the name “Obots” from
Yes, I think you were the one who came across that in a discussion with a Birther on YouTube as I remember.
Foreigner, isn’t the headline enough?
“Unable to locate” does not mean “unable to get for an interview.” After all, they could have located several who were unwilling to be interviewed. Saying that they were unable to locate any of his Columbia classmates is, by any definition, a lie. Is that clear enough for you?
ASK Esq,,
you write that you don’t know whom they “located” or not. (could have located)
still you insist it’s a lie ?! (by any definition)
————————–
Yoda,
do we know who created the headline ?
We had this in another forum with a different topic and it turned out that the headlines were created later by the chief-editor (or how it is called in USA)
No, Crosby stated, as a fact, that the producers “were unable to locate even one of Obama’s classmates from New York based University.” There is nothing to support this claim. As several of Obama’s Columbia classmates have been identified in the past, this claim is, at best, mere speculation even if we apply your generous definition. But, since Crosby offers no evidence to support his claim, and the claim is clearly made to state that none of Obama’s Columbia classmates can be found, a rational person would have no choice but to deem it to be a lie.
from which another rational person would then conclude, that they were actually able to
locate a Columbia classmate of Obama (or deem your statement a lie)
Foreigner, I did not attack the article, only the headline. I do not believe that the article supports the headline. The first time I saw the headline was on ORYR. I do not know if it was the author or an editor that is why I didn’t say anything about the author.
Hmmm…interesting attempt to use semantics to twist a lie into the truth. If one were to read an article about Felix Baumgartner’s dive from the edge of space, and then write your own article saying that he was unable to swim the backstroke, simply because there was no mention of him even attempting to do this, would you say that was an accurate representation of the original article, or a lie based on a complete lack of any supporting evidence in the original article?
It wouldn’t be very difficult to locate Obama classmate Ron Sunshine, since he has his own website which lists his phone number.
http://www.ronsunshine.com/
or – even worse – if I write that he was unable to marry a princess from Mars. Lie ?
How is Doc exaggerating? They did misrepresent the PBS documentary. It is a lie when the documentary uses nothing close to the wording Crosby used. In fact the documentary comes to the opposite conclusion of Crosby. Crosby has a habit of making things up to fit his claims as seen with the Hawaii coding and the flight logs of travelers that Doc pointed out before.
Well, you’ve gone round the bend now, haven’t you? That wouldn’t be a lie, since it is impossible for anyone to marry a princess from Mars. It would, therefore, be pointless to mention. But, since we all know as an undeniable and established fact that it is possible to find Columbia classmates of Obama’s, your comparison is, of course, meaningless.
Do you even have a semblance of a point to make?
Hi doc,
As I said this morning, rhetoric, entertainment, and no love—wait, that describes the symposium on this thread!
There is not just the headline. There is this note, which is there atop the original blog post by Crosby:
“Interviewing several people from Obama’s past, producers of “The Choice” documentary about the coming 2012 election find it inexplicable that there are no Columbia classmates who can attest to Obama’s attendance there.”
Well, they did not find it “inexplicable.” And it is untrue that there are no such Columbua classmates.
Lie is a strong word that stirs up a lot of leaves in the wind. Your comments being such leaves in the wind. But by my light, whether or not you use that word, what people such as Crosby do is worse.
But of course everyone knows he did. The only question is whether or not Michelle is that princess. Feel free to prove that is untrue. By the standards you often espouse here, you must at least accept the possibility and spend time taking it seriously.
“find” e.g. a webpage, is not “locate”. They are doing video interviews.
My point is that you are too quick here with shouting “lie”.
“misrepresent is better”
Both reports conclude that Obama was more isolated in NY, no gang.
Suggesting that the wholly Columbia appearance was fake is another story.
Paper, how do you know > they did not find it “inexplicable.”
ASK Esq might call that a lie, saying something without proof.
“can attest” may mean: in a video interview.
Paper’s 2nd post – I can’t make sense off.
Sometimes people are “funny”, saying the opposite of what they really think,
trying to trick me.
Because they do not say they find it inexplicable. Why don’t you go watch the episode? You can also search the Internet. Go ahead.
Foreigner,
Before you start chasing down rabbit holes, why don’t you first check if they are even actually rabbit holes, instead of worm tunnels?
You make a big deal about misrepresent vs. lie. Misrepresenting is worse, especially in this context.
If you want to make such a big deal about the precise nature of words in a language you do not speak well, then you will have to live with the word “can.” “Can” means capable of. It does not mean unwilling to do. Every Columbia classmate who knew of Obama *can* attest, whether or not they do attest, whether or not they want to attest.
This of course is a silly level of analysis for such clear garbage. But that is what you do here. You reduce your concerns to absurd levels.
The point of the Martian princess story is you spend your time on meaningless matters when you could stop before you start, because the President did not marry a Martian princess. But what you do over and over here is the equivalent of arguing that the writer (me) merely said Michelle Obama *could* be a Martian princess, not that she *is* a Martian princess.
I did not lie. She *could* be. Prove she isn’t. Prove I’m not. Prove Dr. C is not a Venusian Duke. That is the level of your arguments here. It is your shtick.
The bottom line is that classmates exist. They *can* attest to it and some have, in one place or another. The Frontline producers are not the weasels playing word games here.
As a result you are chasing the equivalent of Martian princesses down rabbit holes, and then spending your time arguing about discarded worm casings.
You have the opportunity to change and grow, and leave off such silly arguments. Here is your chance. You are one of the lucky few, to have your irrelevant arguments pointed out to you, rather than just being ignored and left to your own failing devices. Your chance. Or not. Life is short. If that’s how you wish to spend it, fruitlessly, then that’s that.
ahh, back to where we started. They do not say it’s inexplicable so they lied by default.
What do you have with rabbits now ? The reader may judge, who bubbled garbadge.
It’s not a lie or garbadge just because you say so.
I stop reading all of your lengthy posts, little hope of something useful
It’s garbage because *the producers themselves* did not say so, did not say any such thing. *They* did not lie, or misrepresent. Crosby did, about them. I myself prefer misrepresent, over lie, but I also think that is worse.
The readers indeed can judge, and as little as it matters to the world, you face their judgement poorly.
I made a point of keeping the most important post short. Which was simple: the *producers* did not find it inexplicable. That is Crosby’s Daily Pen assertion, which has no basis in the documentary, and which they did not say. Call that what you will. It is not a good thing.
Though you have time to over-analyze Crosby’s words, you seemingly have no time for the actual documentary either. Too long for you?
I saw the relevant Obama-part, see above. We don’t know whether
some of the producers,found it inexplicable and inexplicable is not clearly
defined. We see similar things very often and usually it isn’t called a lie. (IMO)
We do know that none of them said it in the documentary, and you will not find any of them quoted saying it or anything like it. So you can define “inexplicable” anyway you want. They, the producers, said no such thing.
I personally don’t care what you call it, though I do think it is worse than “honest” lying. It is garbage, no matter what kind of garbage.
you call it a lie – then they may show a producer who confirms it
*I* do not call it a lie. I, however, think it is worse.
Your comment about how “they” may show a producer confirming it is nonsense. There is no such thing in the documentary, nothing close. If he is talking about something someone said elsewhere, he’s not quoting or referencing it. No such thing is findable online.
Your only resort is to say who knows what the future will bring? Yes indeed, that’s the same thing as saying who knows when Glenn Beck will confess to his crimes, as sometimes referenced by various commenters on this blog.
So then at best he, Crosby, is being grossly irresponsible in publishing such an assertion without the slightest reference to reality, especially when the documentary he actually is discussing says nothing of the sort. Actual real journalists do not do such crap. Thus, as I say, whatever you call it, it is worse than an “honest” lie.
Foreigner, your comment is like someone saying “Paper finds it inexplicable that no one can attest that the White Sox have ever won the World Series.” First, I never said it, but who knows maybe I will someday, you never know! But even if I do confirm it, it is ridiculous. The White Sox have won the World Series. And people can attest to it.
There are classmates who *can* attest (and have attested) to Obama’s time at Columbia. Moreover, the Frontline editors and reporters clearly are not morons to say something so obviously untrue.
it was you=someone. If you/we call it a lie now and then (as they were challenged)
they may show a producer to express inexplicability, thus making your/our statement a lie.
you said:
> the *producers* did not find it inexplicable.
is it fact or just your opinion and you forgot to include “I think” or “presumably”
or such ?
it started with you quoting
> foreigner : where is the lie ? (except the headline)
I had no problem with the article (I forgot the headline when reading it, also the red inexplicable
part which is somehow separated). I agree that the headline is misleading
Those classmates are all hiding their academic records too! I wonder how much money they spend every year to keep them hidden! I want to know how I can get into this record hiding business, and get a slice of the millions of dollars that are spent keeping confidential records concealed.
found this:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/columbia.asp
I found no report about classmates yet, but didn’t search
a lot. Some names were mentioned above
By some names were mentioned above, do you mean Dr. C’s article, the article we are commenting upon? Because it does mention Boerner, a classmate, as well as Siddiqi, roommate. As does the snopes article. Dr. C also mentions Ron Sunshine from the Maraniss book.
For the point of this conversation, that’s all we need.
Boerner was a roommate,Sunshine a basketball mate.
I also found Cathie Currie , a soccermate
so far I was unable to locate a classmate who remembers him
Having trouble reading?
“…Ron Sunshine, a freshman during Obama’s junior year, remembered asking him one day, ‘How did you get so good?’”
It seems strange that someone such as yourself so concerned about the slightest twist of wording can’t read what Dr. C wrote above, which makes clear Boerner was not just a roommate but a classmate as well.
But you also have trouble searching the internet? This is the first listing in Google for “Phil Boerner Columbia”:
“We both transferred from Oxy to Columbia in fall 1981.”
http://www.college.columbia.edu/cct/jan_feb09/alumni_corner
Goodness gracious, he doesn’t just attest, he publishes a whole article *on the Columbia University website* about his experience.
And you can’t find anyone, huh?
Well, when that happens, you can crow. I will risk it. In the meantime, why don’t you go read the article by Phil Boerner, in the Alumni Corner of Columbia College Today.
It is a fact. The producers did not say it, nor anything like it, in the documentary. That is a fact. That’s the first and most important point, because Crosby uses *misdirection* to strongly imply and lead the reader to think it is in the documentary. It is not. Moreover, he does not quote anyone, even an unnamed source. There is no such statement by a producer findable on the internet. Fact.
It is just as likely Michelle Obama is a Martian princess as any producer of Frontline having said that somewhere where it has not been *quoted,* if only as an unnamed source. First, they are not idiots and wouldn’t say something untrue, especially when they included at least one confirmed classmate in their documentary. Second, Crosby would have quoted an unnamed source at the very least, if he had one, to make his screed stronger. He didn’t. So at the very least he is an irresponsible fill-in-the-blank, and not worthy of being given any benefit of doubt with regard to his veracity. Responsible journalists don’t do what he did. So even were he somehow telling something like a truth, he tosses away any chance to be taken seriously by real journalists or discerning readers.
Third– “Ashwatthama is dead!” Look it up, and learn something from classic literature about misdirection and trickery.
Bottom line: there is no evidence, no indication that they said any such thing. It also is a clear fantasy that they would have.
ok, they also shared a Spanish class, so classmates not just basketball
>Maraniss also mentions in his book another classmate from Columbia
> who remembers Obama (and shared a Spanish class with him):
did the producers locate Sunshine and maybe ask for an interview ?
It doesn’t look interesting enough to me.
As compared with Boerner.
The producers were probably interested in Obama’s political
views and activities and writings and studies.
If they had located classmates to tell about this, we had probably heard it.
I don’t know what is traditional in your country, but in the United States all members of the same graduating class are considered classmates, even if they didn’t take the same courses. When I went to college, I didn’t personally know 99% of my classmates.
Crosby clearly is trying to resurrect that long-debunked story that Obama didn’t actually attend Columbia University. Of course, we know that an article written by Obama was published in the student magazine Sundial in 1983. which would have been a good trick if he hadn’t been a student at the time.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/10978031/1983-article-by-Barack-Obama-Breaking-the-War-Mentality-in-Columbia-Universitys-Sundial-magazine
Also, there is this from WikiCU:
“Obama’s professors and classmates, including former international politics professor Michael Baron and current MTV president Michael Wolf, confirm that he was a brilliant, standout student and that he was an active participant in seminars. Baron said he was one of the top one or two students in his class.”
I have always considered anyone at the college during the same time as me as classmates, regardless of what year. Indeed, I tended to hang out with people from different years from me, and in the alumni magazine I have been included in the reports from one of those other years. Most of my classmates who knew me best were from other years.
When I look up the word, I see both definitions, the broader definition being ” an acquaintance you go to school with.” But if foreigner thinks classmates means being in the same exact class, well, no.
I have always considered anyone at the college during the same time as me as classmates, regardless of what year. Indeed, I tended to hang out with people from different years from me, and in the alumni magazine I have been included in the reports from one of those other years. Most of my classmates who knew me best were from other years.
When I look up the word, I see both definitions, the broader definition being ” an acquaintance you go to school with.” But if foreigner thinks classmates means being in the same exact Spanish class or philosophy class, etc., well, no.
I didn’t even get the idea to define it as you do. Same class = same classroom.
Same courses,lectures,seminars,talks,presentations, cooperating on homework,
projects.Else they would be useless for the intended interviews.
Have you ever set foot on a university campus other than to maybe attend a sports event?
I thought he was describing a one-room schoolhouse.
Or, more charitably, his own school experience, wherever it may have been.
Like Obama, I did not live on campus when I went to college. Most of the people I took classes with were people I saw for an hour, two or three days a week. I do not remember the names of most of them. I socialized with a small number of people who were in the same major program, and they are the only students from college for whom I have a distinct memory.
If someone wanted to interview my college classmates and ask questions about me, good luck on finding anyone who knew me well enough to say anything significant.
don’t you have exercises, seminars, small-groups to elaborate,discuss on
lectures, answer questions , prepare of exam , thesis,..
it was (almost) obligatory for me, they also gave the certifications
that you needed to get the degree
All they needed, if you watch the thing, is people who knew him in New York. The main thrust of that segment of the documentary isn’t about Columbia at all. It is about Obama in New York, on how New York affected him. How he got more serious, was affected by the poverty he saw, tried to figure out how he fit in the Black community and the larger, diverse communities of our country. Indeed, they end the segment talking about how Obama figured out that he needed to synthesize it all together, make it all part of himself, at which point they jump with him to Chicago. New chapter.
As for classrooms, no, no need for same classrooms, lectures, etc. They don’t even talk about that stuff.
And here in these comments the point is about Crosby’s misrepresentation, not about the thematic points being made by the filmmakers.
But if you want to read the full interview with Siddiqi, here it is:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/government-elections-politics/choice-2012/the-frontline-interview-sohale-siddiqi/
They also have the interviews with others from the film, for both Obama and Romney.
The point is Crosby misrepresented the film and the producers.
in the film they print the names and relationship to Obama of the interviewees
as texts and there were 2 classified this way as classmates from Punahou,
4 from Oxy, none from Columbia and 3 from Harvard. I think Crosby was referring
to this classification.
———————————————————-
from the whole Crosby article : (not just the section at obamareport)
> “If you relied on this documentary as a source of truth about whether Obama
> actually attended Columbia,” says Welch, “you would be left with no choice
> but to conclude he did not.”
that however was not suggested or hinted to in the film. I don’t know about Welch
but Crosby repeated it in thick letters. So I have to somehow agree about the misrepresentation,
although not for the passages cited above.
That depends upon many factors, including the college or university attended, the choice of a major field of study, etc. The larger the school, the greater the likelihood that you will not attend multiple classes with the same students. Some people like to study with others when preparing for exams; I preferred to study alone. Some classes called for active participation, while others were a series of lectures. I also spent my last semester in college working on an independent study project; I had regular meetings with my professor but I did not attend any classes. I did help to found and co-edit a student-faculty publication, and the people I worked with on that are the ones I remember best. I took one English class, one Computer Science class, one Public Speaking class, one Geography class, etc. and I do not remember anyone who took those classes with me. I was with them for just a few hours a week over the course of several months 40 years ago. I did not live on campus, so I rarely saw those people outside of the classroom.
On the other hand, I remember all of my high school classmates. It was a small school, we were together for four years, and for the most part we took the same classes with the same teachers. That was a very different environment than college.
Obama was seeking for contacts in NY, but failed
That is obvious and irrelevant. If Crosby was just saying that there were no classmates from Columbia in the film, he would just be incompetent. But he does more than that.
Siddiqi and Boerner were listed as roommates. Boerner also was a classmate, just not listed as such. Big deal. Those titles are never about the whole story, just what is considered relevant, and to this story they tell in the film, roommate is more important than classmate.
Crosby’s misrepresentations are much more involved than just misstating a fact about the film. It also centers on his misrepresentation and misdirection of the producers’ intentions and makes it seem like they said something in the film that they did not.
I myself went right to the Daily Pen post. It is full of nonsense and irrelevant comments, such as the Welch quote you reference here. Not to mention concern over what books he was reading, just his textbooks or oh my goodness did he walk into a bookstore? The film is not about whether or not Obama went to Columbia. The film is about the lives and development of both Romney and Obama.
The story about Obama in New York that they do present is an interesting and important moment. It is about what they thought was important to his development. It isn’t about Columbia.
Some things don’t need the thought people give them
Whether Crosby was or wasn’t referring to this classification is irrelevant, because he says the producers could not even find a single classmate, but in fact they had, Phil Boerner. They just didn’t list him as a classmate. They chose to emphasize that he had been a roommate.
Whatever Crosby knew or knows about Boerner, the producers assuredly knew and know that Boerner was a classmate as well as a roommate. From that one point, Crosby’s premise becomes mush.
Has Crosby issued a correction? Hmmm. Has he said, sorry, there was a classmate in the film? My bad?
And yet you want to say he isn’t misrepresenting?
Your whole defense of Crosby on this point rests on imagining that maybe they told him in private or whispered it somewhere we can’t find yet. And on top of that, Crosby didn’t quote them or anyone, named or unnamed. He does the *classic* technique for misdirection and misrepresentation, and yet, you are interested in defending the possibility that somewhere a producer may have said something that makes no sense for a producer of *this* documentary to have said.
You have read that Daily Pen screed and yet you still think Crosby may be making an honest mistake?! I don’t know to what degree he himself is foolish vs. dishonest (I don’t actually care) and all the other permutations. But that blog post itself is dishonest, if only Crosby being dishonest with himself. It is a dishonest, disreputable piece of work.
Amen.
I am overly involved in following out foreigner’s defense of Crosby, but Amen.
I already said he is misrepresenting (after reading the whole article)
Good. Though you said, not for the passages cited above. Were those not about the producers, the thing we have been discussing? If not, please be clearer, something you could afford to do in general in your posts.
we just have a different definition of classmate.
————————
I was just reading dreams from my father chapters 6,(7)
made me a bit sad,depressed. Nothing special about him, just normal
problems. But, well, he was 22. Nothing about his studies, his thesis.
See, “Jesus, the Missing Years” by John Prine.
Be that as it may, the definition of “classmate” is irrelevant to the question of Crosby’s misdirection, misleading misrepresentation of the producers.
First, by any definition, Phil Boerner seems to fit the definition of classmate (read his article on the Columbia alumni site; they discussed their classes/readings, and the like). Boerner was in the film. That he was not labeled as a classmate is irrelevant to the point about Crosby’s article. If anything it makes Crosby look worse, for playing off that reference in the way he does.
Bottom line, there is no record of the producers having said anything like what Crosby says they did. Everything about the film itself suggests they were not even interested in the question. That may possibly be because they aren’t birthers interested in meaningless stuff.
If you want to read a little something that demonstrates how this young man was a bit different, go read the full interview of Siddiqi on the PBS site. SIddiqi was a more common type of young man, and he quite clearly expresses his boredom/disinterest in Obama’s developing seriousness. Obama’s character at that time was more normal of a certain kind of serious young man (having been such myself, almost exactly in the same place and time actually), but such young men are not all that common (speaking from my experience). We tend to gravitate and find each other, but as young men we tend to be a bit on the outside. Having been called “strange” by a friend around that time for similar reasons, I get it totally.
This point in his life was not about him being some special rockstar, but of his developing character. That is way the short segment on his time in NYC is interesting, more interesting than whatever topics he was discussing, reading in class. That would be boring. To me. I can’t think of many bio-style documentaries that waste their time on such maters, except in the briefest of summary. it is much more interesting to be given a glimpse at his semi-loner years. Such loner years are important times for such men.
Thanks for that. I hadn’t listened to that song in years.
But, I gotta say, the John Prine song that I find most fitting for foreigner has got to be “The Happy Enchilada Song”…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9DA-u2EhmA
I didn’t see him growing into presidency
nor did I learn much about his philosophy
It’s all determined by random events in his surrounding,
no destination, Does he even say what he really thinks
(read chapters 1-6 of dreams from my father now)
If you want to know about Obama’s theory of government, read The Audacity of Hope.
At the end of the New York segment, they make a point of talking about just this matter. Obama’s life had been tossed up in the sense of no father, etc., and at the end of New York he writes about needing to embrace it all, take it all in, be bigger than the circumstances (the random events as you call them) and this group or that group (I am paraphrasing). That is a critical realization for him. That is the first formed seed of his adult character that leads directly to his 2004 convention speech (we are not a blue, black, white, red or purple America…).
The film is about the growth of these two men, Romney and Obama, into the men they would become. It’s about their personal development, not an indepth analysis of their politics. To me that is immensely more interesting. And I like how they did it in this Frontline piece.
But as Dr. C says, you can get theory in The Audacity of Hope.
It’s a memoir, not a political treatise.
Glad to find a Prine fan! What I was getting at was that the daily lives of the most notable figures in world history are often just a mundane as anyone else’s. Jesus the Missing Years is a spoof of the idea that Jesus must have had an amazing life every minute—which runs counter to the gospels, which assert that, after some pre-teen glimmers, he emerged from obscurity at his baptism as an adult.
The real tale of “Jesus the Missing Years” would be pretty darn dull … a twentysomething gets by in Roman Palestine. Yawn. Dreams From My Father is Obama, the Missing Years. It was written before he pursued elected office. What do the ‘foreigner’s of the world, blinded by hindsight, hope to find there? Not even George Washington at age 30 had Chief Executive stamped on his forehead.
Yes, but his wooden dentures were made from the cherry tree he chopped down when he was a kid. Weren’t they? 😉
Yes, but his wooden dentures were made from the cherry tree he chopped down when he was a kid. Weren’t they? 😉
Why, yes, why else would he have cut it down? Mmmmm, cherry goodness!
I have seen a pair of Washington’s choppers, in the exhibit currently traveling ’round. There’s a bit of reality for you!
And they are NOT made out of wood. Presidential Myths started waaaaay early.
Obama in his book hides the choom-gang, the Indonesia/Pakistan trip, the FMD identity,
so it’s obvious that he is trying not to talk about things that might show him in an
anticipated unfourable light wrt. his political career.
Some voters look on such things.
Is it his general strategy, can we expect the same from his policy ? Secret gang-forming,
secret amendments to treaties, deliberately not telling all the aspects of an issue and such.
Well, maybe it’s normal anready anyway.
He is indeed a man of great foresignt.
Or, you are blinded by hindsight.
Take your pick.
Seriously- apparently you believe that anything that Obama didn’t mention in his biography he is ‘hiding”- by that standard Romney is hiding his entire life- since he hasn’t published a biography.
‘secret amendments to treaties’- you really don’t know anything about the United States do you?
Who is this ‘we’ you are speaking of? We Americans can judge President Obama quite fine on his record as President- we don’t need to imagine secret conspiracies or wonder if he and his best budds are building a secret club house behind the White House.
‘secret amendments’- lol.
as with Bush ?
who claims in his memoirs that there had been some “secret” convention
between him and Schroeder that Germany would participate in the Iraq
war and that then he felt “betrayed” when they didn’t
(Schroeder called this a lie)
what I’m trying to figure out : how would Obama,Romney react in a Cuba-like crisis ?
They won’t tell us. Obama wrote his thesis at Columbia about the nuclear
treaties with Russia, so that would certainly be interesting to hear some classmates
that discussed with him about this subject.
OK experienced posters, is this performance art? Am I missing the joke? Or is someone seriously questioning what presidential candidates, supposedly in the 21st century, would do about an old paradigm as if it as any bearing on current reality?
The former seems to be a pet peeve of conspiracy theorists (you will probably know some of those on both the right and the left in Germany, you can google “Kanzlerakte” for an example), the latter is actually quite common among politicians (just remember what Wikileaks turned up about Arab states publically pretending to be anti-Israel but secretly supporting the status quo).
Have you read Helmut Kohl’s autobiography? Does he mention all the gory details of his days of shame (like the anonymous illegal donors whose names he refuses to disclose)? And if not, does that retroactively make him a bad chancellor?
Is “has written an autobiography that omits literally nothing” now an eligibility criterion in the court of public opinion? I somehow doubt it.
Such as that may or may not have been, that is not an amendment, much less an amendment to a treaty, and certainly not a secret amendment.
That kind of thing is called a “handshake.”
Or “gentlemen’s agreement.”
Foreigner could be called a “concern troll.”
It is called editing.
Notice in this article here how Obama wrote about smoking here, there and everywhere like it was a Dr. Seuss story.
Notice that the author of the news article below understands the relationship of this new information to the old information when he uses the phrase “gives more detail.”
If that is what you call hiding, in any meaningful sense, can you get working on the question of what brand of socks he wears? I mean, after all, he is hiding his socks inside his shoes every day. We know, of course, that Michelle Obama shops at JC Penney. But where else does she shop? Why is she hiding that?
That he chose not to write about every detail of his smoking days is trivial. You might want to consider, for only one example, that he may have wanted to protect the identities of those other people involved? And if he did not want to tell every detail because he also thought those extra details were too much to reveal about himself? So what?
Again, it is called editing. Not to mention it is called a memoir, not sworn testimony as subpoenaed by Orly Taitz.
http://abcnews.go.com/m/blogEntry?id=16431089
>>>>>>>>In his 1995 memoir “Dreams of My Father,” Obama writes about smoking pot almost like Dr. Seuss wrote about eating green eggs and ham. As a high school kid, Obama wrote, he would smoke “in a white classmate’s sparkling new van,” he would smoke “in the dorm room of some brother” and he would smoke “on the beach with a couple of Hawaiian kids.”
He would smoke it here and there. He would smoke it anywhere.
Now a soon-to-be published biography by David Maraniss entitled “Barack Obama: The Story” gives more detail on Obama’s pot-smoking days…<<<<<<<<
found this: http://www.thefogbow.com/disembodied/friends/#Columbia
so Boerner likely was a classmate too (by my definition).
But the producers maybe didn’t know that
is the 1995 version available ? in the 2004 version I found “smake reefer”
which seems to refer to marihuana.
choom gang was first in the news 2012.05.25
That’s my take.
A concern troll with a severe case of Devil’s Advocate Dysentery also known as Sophitis.
What, are you trolling to be insulted or something?
Dr. C mentions Boerner in his article right above. I provided you with a link to Boerner talking of his classmate Barack Obama on the Columbia University website itself. The producers even interviewed Marannis.
It is so nice for you that you finally got your Internet search skills up and running enough to find some information already given to you while you were continually defending Crosby.
Now you want to suggest that maybe the producers didn’t know? That has already been discussed above.
You think it’s possible the producers didn’t know?! That is more ridiculous than an Orly Taitz subpoena.
Why don’t you use your new search skills to read up on film editing and storytelling and to do an online PhD thesis about how titles in documentaries work, and in tv news shows too? I eagerly await your catching up with the rest of the world.
you just can’t stand other opinions, not even neutral ones.
I’d like you to cooperate with the birthers to figure out the truth.
I know what you’ll say —
Are you talking about me? And are you talking about yourself having neutral opinions?
As for the truth, what point are you talking about? We know Obama was born in Hawaii. Truth. We know Boerner was a classmate and he was in the film. Truth. We know that if the producers didn’t know Boerner was a classmate, they at least deserve to never work in the industry again. I know that from professional experience.
What do you think needs cooperation (specifically with regards this documentary) with birthers who do not accept basic facts as facts? I should work with someone who at the very least is as demonstrably irresponsible as Crosby?
It doesn’t really matter what you say here, you know. Your views on this subject at the very least will never have any value in the actual world. That is the bottom line. That you seemingly don’t desire to learn what actual neutral investigation is like is your own limitation. You are the one who has to live with that.
teaching mate Said:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/edward-said-the-founding-father-who-may-explain-obamas-benghazi-errors/
why in his book does Obama paint a picture of family and normal problems
when his studies and ideals and true thoughts were so much different from that ?
Why is the author here speculating so much about what Obama really thought
about Said and other lecturers ? Is this all secret to the public who shall vote him
but only discussed on a higher level with the professors ?
Right on cue, he nails it! LOL!
Because there is NO chance that his views have changed over the course of the past three decades. Apparently in your worldview people’s opinions never change after they graduate college.
Because his entire point is to cast aspersion upon Obama. Since the author has no evidence, he speculates. If he had evidence, he wouldn’t have to speculate.
When I attended college I took history classes with one professor who was an avowed Marxist and another professor who was virulently anti-Marxist. So what does that make me?
i think boromir has something to say about that.
If you are just going to change the topic, go post on the open thread already…
Birthers by definition believe something false. The truth about Obama’s birth does not need to be figured out. It is old news. Basic fact. What truth shall we cooperate with Birthers to figure out?
I meant, why did the author at blaze _have_ to speculate so much,
why doesn’t Obama himself talk about it ?
This talking about political theories was what had determined the biggest
part of his life and his thoughts. Still it must somehow be hidden from
non-professors, non-experts. Is it all so problemeatic that (Rep.-)
opponents might quote him with it, _might_ misinterpret it, _might_
use it in their campaigns against him ?
And that could also explain his secrecy about the records, even his birth
certificate. There was apparently also some trouble in 2008 already,
which I almost missed -I remember Bill Ayers or such –
and which may have caused this secrecy.
He gives more interviews than any President in living memory.
Perhaps if his opposition had not taken such a hostile tone, the opportunity would exist to _ask_ him about “it”, whatever “it” is supposed to be.
Bill Ayers indeed. What is the relevance of Bill Ayers please?
the Maraniss book has many more details about Obama and Columbia
Yes it does. It’s a book. It’s also about Obama, not about Romney and Obama. That also is why Dr. C quoted from it, and pointed out that the producers surely had such details available o them. Not only was he a major source of the film, “everybody” was talking about his book when it came out. Part of the reason he would be in the film is that book. Thus, the fact of this book is one of the reasons it was clear there is no real chance that the producers would have said the things Crosby put in their mouths.
Are you caught up now?
As for smear value, only the former fact matters. It’s enough to insinuate you might adhere to the same ideas because any contact with Marxism taints you indelibly.
That’s how guilt by association works. Attend a church for 20 years, your pastor says two or three questionable things during those decades, bang!, you’re busted.
“the producers”, who is that ? And how many ?
The book is still hard to read, 600 pages,long stories,
no summaries,not always chronological. (but other than the Obama books
it does have an alphabetical index)
Fact is they had none marked as NY-classmate in the film.
Boerner was much more roommate than classmate.
> Obama skipped the graduation ceremonies, finishing his time at Columbia
> much as he had begun: isolated and apart from the college scene.
They should have interviewed his NY-girlfriend – maybe she refused.
If you’re good enough, perhaps the publisher will bless you with a large-print, abridged, illustrated edition.
now I found it : Obama’s philosophy !
From an interview 2011.11.10
> The only way my life makes sense is if regardless of culture,race,
> religion,tribe, there is this commonality, these essential human truths
> and passions and hopes and moral precepts that are universal.
> And that we can reach out beyond our differences.If that is not the case
> then it is pretty hard for mr to make sense of my life.
> So that is at the core of who I am.
(looking back on that [NY-] period from the distance of the White House)
Fact is that is irrelevant.
foreigner :
They should have interviewed his NY-girlfriend – maybe she refused???
didn’t you read david maraniss’ book and the accounts from girlfriends?
or “Young Barack Obama in Love” in vanity fair?
Obama skipped the graduation ceremonies?
thousands of students attend & graduate from columbia – i have a family member who graduated from nyu and also chose not to attend graduation
Not that you or Crosby are paying me to do your work for you, but here is your answer:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/government-elections-politics/choice-2012/credits-30/
That is after all a question Crosby should have addressed, if he was going to talk about “producers.”
Incorrect. I refer you *again* to Boerner’s own article on the Columbia Alumni Corner.
http://www.college.columbia.edu/cct/jan_feb09/alumni_corner
Need more? Need someone to spell it out? See below. If you think either of these two men (or any other producer on their team) didn’t know that Boerner was a classmate, well…as Rev. Al Sharpton likes to say lately, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. Not the Brooklyn Bridge, mind you. That thing gets sold and resold all the time. But I’ve got all kinds of other bridges in stock for any budget…
Re: Michael Kirk & Mike Wiser
>>>
Michael Kirk is an award winning documentary filmmaker and partial creator[1] of the PBS show Frontline. He has produced such documentaries as “Inside the Meltdown,” about the 2008 financial crisis, “Bush’s War,” about the Iraq War under George W. Bush, and “The Way the Music Died,” about the dire straights of the record industry.
Kirk has won every major award in journalism, including the Peabody Award, duPont-Columbia Award, nine Emmys and six Writers Guild of America awards. Mr. Kirk also owns a production company, the Kirk Documentary Group, in Brookline, Massachusetts. Kirk is also a former Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard University.[2]
and…
Since 2003, Mike [Wiser] has worked as an Emmy award-winning television producer, writer and journalist for the PBS series FRONTLINE. His most recent film “The Anthrax Files” (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/anthrax-files/) looks into the FBI’s investigation of the 2001 anthrax letter attacks. Other recent projects have included “Top Secret America” (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/topsecretamerica/), an examination of government secrecy in the government’s war on terror, and “Death by Fire” (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/death-by-fire/), an investigation into the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham. In 2009, he worked on investigations into the causes and fallout of the financial crisis in a series of films including “Inside the Meltdown,” “Breaking the Bank,” and the Emmy award-winning film “The Warning.” In 2008, he served as a producer on the Emmy award-winning mini-series “Bush’s War,” a four-and-a-half-hour history of the Bush administration’s foreign policy. Mike has also been nominated for a “New Approaches” Emmy for his role in producing an interactive web video timeline documenting American foreign policy after September 11th. Mike is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Middlebury College.
<<<
paper, your link is entitled:
> Barack Obama ’83, My’t even mention in the article. Columbia College Roommate
we were talking about NY, not Oxy. They only once had a common course (=class)
which he doesn’t even mention in the article.
Lots of producers, likely that 2 or more of them didn’t know about Columbia classmates,
thus formally making that Crosby statement true. He’s still misrepresenting in that he
suggests Obama hadn’t attended/graduated Columbia.
Apparently Obama never entered internet although he liked to meet international people
and discuss. In early 2011 he referred to internet as a network or misinformation
For someone who spends so much time parsing molehills, you are incredibly incompetent in your reading skills. Sorry to be so blunt. But after this entire thread, you deserve the truth. I am after all trying to cooperate with you to get to the truth.
Columbia *is* in New York.
I quote Boerner’s very own words to you *again*:
“We both transferred from Oxy to Columbia in fall 1981.”
You do understand the word “we,” don’t you? As in…”we both.”
That sentence all by itself means Boerner went to Columbia. Not only that, they transferred *together.* Plus, just for your edification, college roommates typically, frequently at the very worst, are one’s classmates. All my college roommates, just to take a random example, were all my classmates, too.
Also, as you were told above, no one, at least in America, uses the word classmate to mean only someone with common courses.
I also highlighted for you the main two producers. If either one of those extremely professional people, didn’t know Boerner, for example, was a classmate, that would be an earthshaking level of incompetence. Read their credentials again. You think such people
didn’t read or know what Marannis wrote, what Boerner wrote on the *Columbia* website in 2009?
If you think any other producer on *their* team is so incredibly incompetent, as incompetent as someone like Crosby is, that is just simply ludicrous. It is extremely *unlikely* that any of these individuals would be so mind-numbingly, moronically incompetent. Again, I also know from professional experience how ludicrous that is. To not even google, for instance, one of the people they are interviewing? If nothing else, five seconds on Google and they have their answer. Such people reportedly found it “inexplicable” that they couldn’t find a classmate? Please.
Any professional doing a legitimate documentary, much less any discerning reader, would know from reading only Boerner’s article alone, not to mention other sources such as Marannis, that Boerner for one was not only a classmate, but the quintessential classmate.
How much did you say you could afford for a bridge? I have all sizes, just in case you can’t afford very much.
paper, I’m not sure whether you say what you really think or whether you are just trying
to adapt to the trend here, trying to be abusive,insulting which won’t work with me so well anyway.
I’m used to it. Of course, Columbia is NY. I heard Columbia lessons myself, we talked a lot
about it in this thread, I often mentioned NY and Columbia, I read the chapters in dreams,
audacy and Maraniss – and you know it.
And we had that discussion about classmate-definition earlier in this thread, and you know that too.
> no one, at least in America, uses the word classmate to mean only someone with common courses
such “no one” sentences are usually wrong, just one counterexample …And ironically we have it already
with 2 sources classifying him as roommate, not classmate. And that’s all what I said :
> he’s much more roommate than classmate
Few people know about Boerner’s and Obama’s common Said-class.Even if “the producers”
(even those that you pick) knew it, they still presented him as roommate and we don’t know what
Crosby knew. The quintessence is, that choice2012 tells us little about Obama’s classes
at NY, i.e. his studies and thesis about nuclear disarmment.
I was not being abusive. You asked above somewhere for truth. This is truth. I also for some random reason thought you should have a chance to grow, to mend your ways, to see your own failings and change. You may not, probably don’t, recognize that as an opportunity. You will probably continue to frame this as abuse, and fail to learn something. Your loss. C’est la vie.
More on the details of your comments in a moment…
Nor was the film written to do so. And this article by Dr. C about Crosby’s mendacious blog post is also not about that. Irrelevant to this conversation.
it’s what you were talking about above – classmates in the video.
We already agree that Crosby misreprents the video in that he suggests
they’d suggest Obama didn’t attend Columbia
Yet you just wrote: “we were talking about NY, not Oxy.” As if Boerner were only an Oxy classmate and not Columbia, as well. I layed it on thick about CC being in NY to emphasize that Boerner was a classmate in New York. Not just Oxy.
And yet despite your knowledge of the definition of classmate, you still just wrote: “They only once had a common course (=class) which he doesn’t even mention in the article.” As if that matters or is relevant to whether or not Boerner was a classmate, much less whether or not anyone knew. Which is the topic here.
I know you read these things. But are you competent at it? A question you may want to consider. Fixation on the tiniest of absurd faux-technicalities does not make for competent analysis. Sorry, no.
Hard words perhaps, but not abusive, just the truth, which is what you requested.
The point is Crosby was mendaciously misrepresenting the film’s and the producers’ comments about finding classmates. Your only hold out is that you suggest it is possible he talked to a producer, or worse heard some hearsay gossip, or perhaps read it somewhere (not readily searchable). Because the producers themselves have not all come our a declared him a liar, you think the window is still open.
I don’t need to hear the producers all line up and deny it. You could then argue it is possible some of them are the ones lying. Ad nauseam. And I do mean nauseum. That is not an insult. That is for your edification, so you can perhaps realize what actual discerning readers think and feel about such silliness.
I can readily see Crosby’s mendaciousness on his page. Simply in how he phrases his claims, and his total lack of professional standards, especially when making such claims about people he does not name nor reference as actual unnamed sources. That’s all I really need. But then I put that up against my own professional experience and up against the obvious competence and professionalism of the Frontline team. I also know it is ludicrous to think in any serious way that such professionals didn’t know Boerner was a classmate.
Weigh all that against a blog post already contaminated to an extremely toxic degree, as evidenced by your own agreement that Crosby was wrong to suggest Obama didn’t even attend Columbia.
I will concede, however, that Crosby did spell the word “the” correctly. Don’t let those Obots claim otherwise. Someone needs to defend Crosby from such slings and arrows, don’t they?
The sources classifying Boerner as a roommate do not have any bearing on the definition of the word classmate. I said no one uses the word classmate to mean only course-mate; I did not say no one called Boerner a roommate.
And yet this is not a particle accelerator attempting to measure quantum states, is it? So…how about, in my whole life, an engaged professional life, I have never heard such a usage until now? How about I even looked it up in the dictionary and posted about that above in this thread? Good enough for you? Tedious enough for everybody else?
That you think it is important to talk about the degree to which “no one” actually means “no one” is part of your pattern evident here of avoiding truth, for rabbit holes and sideshows. This is why people call you a concern troll. Charitably, I just think your comments often, and especially here, demonstrate incompetence. Incompetence can be overcome, after all. But I admit, I am being charitable.
Beyond that, being classified as a roommate has no bearing on what else Boerner was. The film also did not label him as being human. Go figure. Boerner was and is clearly and obviously and easily found out to be a classmate. That Boerner was called a roommate in the film is irrelevant here. At best, it means Crosby is incompetent. That is being way too charitable, but that is the best case.
Which is irrelevant. Because, again, they both went to Columbia. They even transferred there together; they were classmates. They could have taken zero courses together and they still would have been classmates. You say you read the thread above where this was discussed. Start acting like it.
We know what Crosby *said.*
It takes a lot of mendaciousness or incompetence to get to what Crosby said, from what the film said, or from anything in public. If by some fantasy he had some kind of secret conversation or access, and someone or two someones possessed of enough idiocy to say such a thing, then Crosby is just extremely incompetent in his reporting, which in this context is not better than lying. That’s the best case, and it is a case that is senseless given the entirety of that blog post.