President Barack Obama has made a career out of spinning tall tales when it comes to his early years. His book, Dreams from my Father, has a number of inaccuracies. Today he continued in that great tradition of obfuscation, that he has mastered so well.
Near the beginning of his speech to the schoolchildren of America he says, “When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.”
As the parent of two successful home-schooled daughters, I like the sound of his mother teaching him at home. The reality of his situation was different however. It looks like the President took another opportunity to cloud the issue of his early years, rather than clarify.
To read his words, it sounds like it were he and his mother against the world, when in reality, he was living a comfortable middle class existence with his mother, and his step-father, Lolo Soetoro, who was a government employee and served as a government relations consultant with, Mobil Oil.
Barry Soetoro, (as the future President was known at that time) attended the Roman Catholic school, Fransiskus Assisis, where he was listed as a Muslim and as an Indonesian citizen. I wonder why he didn't mention that in his speech to the schoolchildren?
Ironically, a few years later, when he moved back to Hawaii, he was immediately enrolled in Punahou School, a private school that is one of the most prestigious and expensive in the United States. His half sister, Maya Kassandra Soetoro, also attended Punahou. So, it looks like the Soetoros were too poor to go to school in Indonesia, but not in the US.
What we have here, is an obvious attempt in this speech to spin a, “poor me” yarn about his early years. But who can blame him, so far it has worked wonderfully for him.
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