Courtesy of Howard Kurtz, the reliably liberal host of CNN’s Reliable Sources and, in his spare times, the media critic for the Washington Post, comes word that the Obama White House is none too pleased with the story that’s been raging through the blogosphere the past few days.
Dinesh D’Souza has drawn a torrent of criticism with a Forbes cover story that accuses President Obama of adopting “the cause of anti-colonialism” from his Kenyan father.
But while most detractors focus on the author–and Newt Gingrich, who embraced the critique–the White House is aiming its ammunition at the business magazine.
“It’s a stunning thing, to see a publication you would see in a dentist’s office, so lacking in truth and fact,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs says in an interview. “I think it represents a new low.”
Gibbs is meeting with Thursday afternoon with Forbes’s Washington bureau chief, Brian Wingfield, to discuss his objections. “Did they not fact-check this at all, or did they fact-check it and just willfully ignore it?” he asks.Nothing like a visit from the press secretary to focus the mind! But don’t expect a retraction from either Forbes or the Indian-born D’Souza:
The magazine would not make Editor-in-Chief Steve Forbes, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1996 and 2000, available for comment, or any other editor. The biweekly did issue a statement: “Dinesh D’Souza’s cover story was presented as an analysis of how the president thinks. No facts are in contention. Forbes stands by the story.”
But some facts are very much in contention, and D’Souza–who loosely based the article on his forthcoming book, “The Roots of Obama’s Rage”–isn’t hesitant to discuss his work.
Reached separately in New York, D’Souza, 49, who worked in the Reagan White House, says his argument that the president was heavily influenced by the late Barack Obama Sr. is a “psychological theory.” But, he insists, “the idea that Obama has roots that are foreign is not an allegation, it’s a statement of fact.”So what do you think? Baseless innuendo that revives the “birther” argument that Obama was not born in the U.S., or astute analysis of a man who spent most of his formative years either outside the country or off the mainland?
Be sure to read the Forbes piece and Jack Cashill’s response, “What D’Souza Doesn’t Get Quite Right,” at American Thinker. Meanwhile, the mystery of whom Barack Hussein Obama II really is — not where he was born, but who he is — continues to deepen.
Big Journalism
