In late October 2007, the New York Times ran a telling article on Barack Obama headlined, “Obama’s Account of New York Years Often Differs From What Others Say.”
Given that he was an announced candidate for president, and an underdog at that, the Times expected Obama to welcome the chance to reconcile his account in his memoir, “Dreams from My Father,” with the accounts of those who knew him.
“Yet,” lamented the newly neutered Times, “he declined repeated requests to talk about his New York years, release his Columbia transcript or identify even a single fellow student, co-worker, roommate or friend from those years.”
A campaign spokesman, Ben LaBolt, offered a painfully lame explanation for Obama’s reticence, “He doesn’t remember the names of a lot of people in his life.”
Lame or not, it worked, and it continues to work on a media that have spent more time in the dumpsters of Wasilla than they have investigating the preposterously unknown history of the world’s best-known man.
When the media leave holes in a given narrative – in this case, the biography of a presidential candidate – bloggers individually, incrementally and indefatigably strive to fill them in, usually with mixed results.
One hole that remains strangely unfilled in that narrative is the academic year 1981-1982, a year Obama was reportedly a student at Columbia University.
The irrepressible researcher Orly Taitz secured a document through the National Student Clearinghouse on Obama’s Columbia attendance.
The document confirms Obama’s graduation from Columbia with a political science degree in 1983, but it places him there only in the 1982-1983 academic year.
“As there is no record of Obama residing anywhere else in the United States from September 1981-September 1982, or attending any other university,” Taitz infers, “by way of simple deduction it becomes clear that his visit to Pakistan lasted not a month or two, as he claims, but over a year.”
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