As was reported last week at Breitbart.com, the 1991 literary agency listing for President Barack Obama had him as  ”Kenyan-born”.  Also reported at Breitbart was the fact that the agency’s “fact-checking” error was listed on their website up until 2007.  While this did unleash another round of “birtherism”, we here at The Trenches are deciding to report upon it because, oddly enough, two profiles of Barack Obama from the early 90′s both seemed to manage to get his birthplace correct, unlike the agency he likely paid to promote himself.

In this January 1993 profile from Chicago Magazine, Obama is praised lavishly for his efforts with Project Vote!, a voter registration drive that helped explode black voter registrations in Chicago.  And oddly enough, despite the erroneously “fact-checked” bio of the man’s literary agency, writer Gretchen Reynolds touches on Obama’s early days, and gets it correct:

The son of a black Kenyan political activist and a white American anthropologist, Obama was born in Hawaii, received a degree in political science and English literature from Columbia University, and, in 1990, became the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review.

So, at least at that point, it was being related to members of the press that Obama was born in Hawaii, and not Kenya, as his literary agency had it. Now whether that’s information that Obama himself imparted to the writer, or was obtained elsewhere, it is interesting to note they got that part correct, because especially in the pre-Internet days, I imagine a bio for someone who’s considered to be a “rising star” would probably have been a primary source for anyone choosing to do research on the man.

The second article that directly references Obama’s birthplace comes from an LA Times profile of him in 1990, after he had ascended to be the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review. While this link isn’t ideal, his birthplace is noted in the second article found here.

Born in Hawaii, where his parents met in college, Obama was named Barack (blessed in Arabic) after his father, wrote the reporter in 1990.

What’s perhaps more interesting to note, at least, is the fact that this story was written the year BEFORE the strange, poorly fact-checked bio even came into existence.

So while the birthers have gone full-bore again with this idea, perhaps the more important thing to look at here is how and/or why, these two reports of him from 1990 and 1993 had his birthplace correct, but again, the literary agency meant to promote the man, listed him as Kenyan-born, and let the error ride for 16 years.

Something does not compute.

UPDATE:

Just this weekend (Aug. 25-26) a picture started appearing on Twitter, with the allegation being that the picture is from the 1991 Harvard (Law?) Yearbook. The picture shows a smiling Barack Obama, and shares an amazingly similar bio as the one reported on above. While this is probably unwelcomed by the author of the particular tweet to be shared, this is what it looks like:

Stay tuned…

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