Obama in Kenya---aunt in blue.
In 1991, the Kenya version of Obama’s birth narrative made its first known appearance. Obama’s February 1990 New York Times coverage had attracted the attention of literary agent Jane Dystel, whose agency Acton & Dystel had previously handled the work of black civil rights author James Baldwin.(8) Seeing Obama as another potential Baldwin, Dystel suggested that he write a book proposal. On November 28, 1990, Simon & Schuster imprint Poseidon Press offered Obama a six-figure contract for a book to be called Journeys in Black and White. In 1991, Obama took a position at the University of Chicago Law School in order to write the book.
In Chicago, Obama developed writer’s block and became preoccupied with his social life with Michelle, and he missed his book’s publishing deadline. On October 20, 1992, Poseidon Press terminated its contract with Obama, leaving him owing them money for his cash advance.
While Obama was working on Journeys in Black and White, the Kenya version of his birth narrative made its first known appearance in publicity material circulated in 1991 by Dystel’s literary agency, Acton & Dystel.(9) To celebrate the 15th anniversary of its 1976 founding, Acton & Dystel produced a 36-page booklet showcasing 90 of its clients. Obama’s entry appeared between New Kids on the Block and Mark Olshaker. It stated, “Barack Obama, the first African-American president of Harvard Law Review, was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.” The piece concluded by mentioning the anticipated publication of Journeys in Black and White.
The booklet was edited by Miriam Goderich, who later went on to become Dystel’s partner at a new agency, Dystel & Goderich. In 2012, Goderich emailed Yahoo News a statement attributing the Kenya birthplace detail to a fact-checking error on her part: “This was nothing more than a fact checking error by me--an agency assistant at the time. . .There was never any information given to us by Obama in any of his correspondence or other communications suggesting in any way that he was born in Kenya and not Hawaii. I hope you can communicate to your readers that this was a simple mistake and nothing more.”(10) Of course, this raises the question of how a publishing professional could make such a fact-checking error. What led Goderich to think Obama was born in Kenya?
If Goderich made an error, neither she nor Obama were quick to notice or correct it. After Obama became a U.S. Senator in 2004, Dystel & Goderich’s website listed him as a client with a biography that included the statement, “He was born in Kenya to an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister and was raised in Indonesia, Hawaii, and Chicago.”(11) Then-Breitbart editor-at-large Ben Shapiro documented that Dystel & Goderich continued to use this wording on its website until April 2007, two months after Obama announced his Presidential candidacy.(12) Sometime between April 3 and April 21 of 2007, Dystel & Goderich updated its website biography of Obama to read, “He was born in Hawaii to an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister and was raised in Indonesia, Hawaii, and Chicago.”
A Tale of Two Countries: A Brief History of Barack Obama’s Conflicting Birth Narratives
And then there’s Bill Ayers’s ghostwriting.
Obama in Kenya---aunt in blue.