Did you ever do a fact-check on how your parents met?

[ecstatic]

:shrug:

Rove is talking about how Obama misled people regarding how his parents met, but it's possible that his parents just gave him bad information.

I personally have never done a fact-check with regard to how my parents met (they said it was in college)--I just take their word for it.

I imagine the lies parents tell their kids about how they met will only increase now that we're in this Internet age.

[dkf]

1. Or when you were born compared to their wedding date...

Sometimes that doesn't work out too well.

[DearAbby]

19. Yeah...

My Parents married in December 1954...I was born 8 months later in August 1955...but I was early, I was told. Dad used to always ask how old I was, around anniversary time...that way he always knew ;)

[boppers]

2. "Son, you mom and I met on a WoW party raid." Heh.

Apropos: http://xkcd.com/318/

[blonndee]

3. Or who you were named after, or other family legends like that...

[EFerrari]

5. It's pretty hard to be named after a hero before he was a hero. n/t

[boppers]

8. Or your parents meet because of something that didn't happen yet?

That's what Rove is carping on about.

[EFerrari]

12. I sort of love the pathological liar on SNL.

He reminds me of my mom, aka, the Cadillac Woman who could sell you your own used car.

But, I don't want him to be president.

[Dogmudgeon]

4. We need to be charitable with people's innocent confabulations.

Except if their last name is "Clinton".

--p!

[FrenchieCat]

6. Abram (sp?) was on his Verdict show talking about how

Obama may have fibbed about his parents getting married because of the inspiration of the Civil Rights Act....but that it was in 1964, and his parents would have married in 1960 or something.

I think that this assertion that is being made about Obama fibbing is incorrect and misunderstood. I know for a fact that the "Civil Rights Movement" started waaaayyyyy before the Federal "act" ever got signed, and I'm sure that this is what Barack was referring to. The movement got started good in the mid 50s. Rosa Parks was arrested in December of 1955. State after state were having their own Civil rights Act signed.

Ohio's Civil Rights Act came in 1959. http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=1393
and others around from that time on...and continues, state by state till 1964, when the Federal act was signed.

Hawaii, became a state in 1959....so it is possible that residents of Hawaii being more diverse were following events much closer, in particular Obama's mom and dad....due to their relationship.

[boppers]

10. Hawaii, interestingly enough, it one of the most ethnically diverse states in the union.

20% (yes, 20%) of the population self-defines as "mixed race". Check out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaii#Demographics

[bhikkhu]

7. Reminds me of the snark about how Hillary's mom chose her name.

Hillary said she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary, after her mom read of him. Doubt arose when comprehensive media searches revealed no stories in print she was likely to have read prior to the birth of her daughter...

What difference does it make? Are candidates supposed to hire teams of detectives to research all the family stories and anecdotes they have grown up with?

[Hepburn]

9. Both my parents are dead and so are all their siblings.

I have NO clue how my parents met and I never thought to ask them about it. Too late now!

[boppers]

11. My mom told me she was a "working girl" at a diner when my father walked up and proposed.

She eventually agreed to scheduling a non-paid-date instead.

Sometimes, it's not a bad thing to not know. :shrug:

[EFerrari]

13. Here's to our real human parents

a lesson Chelsea Clinton still has to learn.

:toast:

[LoveHC]

14. I love the rationalizations for Obama here

If I call Obama a liar, which he is, I'm sure I will be called a racist.

We can't elect LIARS! = every post about Hillary. Well, we can if we rationalize why they lied, apparently.

[boppers]

15. That's a semi-fair-ish charge.

Both candidates are, at their hearts, story-tellers. What seems to matter is when somebody feels that they are misled, betrayed, or insulted by a story.

(I'm going to back-away, delicately, from the american "black story teller" myth/stereotype, and not sling that charge, as it's a pretty ugly one)

So, without bringing (much) race into it:

Take, for example, Hillary's sniper story vs. her first name story. Both are patently false, as is the story that events at Selma was the trigger that allowed Barack's parents to unite.

Did Barack keep upping the ante? Were his parents "dodging molotov cocktails"? Was he suddenly "more experienced" because he claimed all of the accomplishments of his parents, or those around him, as solely his own?

I think the outrage is not about our pair of story-tellers with a good yarn, it's about pretending the yarn is *real*, and then basing their candidacy on it.

Put another way, I see a lot of resumes in my work. I see a lot of heavily padded ones. I see some slightly padded ones. I see very, very few ones that have no embellishment.

I almost never (1 in the last 16 years) see resumes that listed their husband's experiences as their own credentials.

[LoveHC]

16. Hillary was transformed from the pants-suit behind the presidency she wasn't

to the tea-time first lady she also wasn't. She was not Bill Clinton, no, but she was deeply involved with that presidency. The only way she could defend herself was to lie. She based her candidacy on something real - experience. She actually did have it, but she had no proof of it. You can see her skill in her Senatorial career, which should have been proof enough. She also cut ribbons and for that she was going to be cut to pieces. So she lied.

By exaggerating her lack of experience (mostly press driven incredulity), she was forced to exaggerate her wealth of it. She was never given a fair shake ever. Watch MSNBC for a mere minute. We forced her to the exact place we always assumed her to be.

As well, if there was a show like KO which devotes itself to 1 hr a day of Obama bashing, it would be called racist. That is a truth, and I believe Ferraro was right. (And she was called a racist for that, proving my point.)

That being said, this place is an absolute Obama psychosis. Not unlike MSNBC. Air America. Daily Kos. Etc. I can't believe, considering the bashing she endures from the left wing, that Hillary has lasted this long, or gets any votes at all. Winning the big states as she has, IMO, is remarkable.

I'm starting to believe the Bill Clinton 90s was the Great Depression from reading this board.

[blonndee]

17. "The only way she could defend herself was to lie."

HOLY CRAP!

I just cannot say anything else but HOLY CRAP right now.

[LoveHC]

21. That is exactly what Obama did in his speech

He just lied in a very clever intellectual way. Drawing false equivalencies. Excusing vitriolic radicalism and hate by pandering to white guilt. And worse, he told you he was going to start a conversation on race. To elevate all of us above it (especially himself). And then immediately the very next day, changed the subject. Then went on vacation.

but HOLY CRAP what a speech.

[blonndee]

23. LOL!!

[boppers]

24. The only people who have white guilt are those who benefited from it. eom

[ecstatic]

27. There are 2 networks

that devote almost 24 hours daily to bashing Obama--CNN and FOX. And lately ABC and MSNBC. So try again.

[blogslut]

18. Ya know, Karl

When you do this petty crap, it opens the door for others to do it to you. Are you sure this is a door you want to open?

[donheld]

20. I gave my parents lie detector tests

:D

[quakerboy]

22. Heh

I recently had to get a copy of my birth certificate(for the passport process). Before I sent it, I looked it over. I was shocked to note that my mothers name was listed under her maiden name. I was right on the edge of calling her to say WTF, when I noticed that she signed with her married name, so i took a closer look. The form asked for her maiden name first, and later the married name.


And as to how my parents met... The past few years have been full of revelations about my parents. At this point a deviation from the "we met when he was making tea in the dorm kitchen" story wouldn't surprise me much. Nothing less than "it was one of the orgy's we all had back then" would be even mildly surprising now. And even that, after my mom defined orgy for me(at least 3 people and a goat on a bed) wouldn't really mess with me that much.

[McCamy Taylor]

25. Yeah at the same timeIm sticking my head out the plane to see if the pilot who told me we are

landing in sniper fire is pulling my leg or if my head will really get shot off.

Guys, can you be any more obvious about your biases?

Hillary was told the plane had to change course because of gunfire. This poor scared woman with her daughter heard "gunfire" and her mind was filed with images of gunfire on the the runway. They told her she would have to run and she imagined it. You can actually get PTSD from an imagined frightening event if it is scary enough and the thought of your kid facing that is pretty nasty. So, she laid down a false memory.

12 years later, when she was telling the story, her adrenalin kicks in. She is thinking "Why am I getting so nervous telling this story?" The image of gunfire on an airfield goes through her head. It has been so long since the event that she can not tell the difference between something she saw with her eyes and something she pictured and something she saw on a video by this point. She tells the story in a way that is consistent with her own memory of fear. It seems authentic to her. That is how people tell their stories. They make the details match their emotions---since memory of details is so flawed but our memory of emotions is so vivid. The listener judges the authenticity by looking to see if the details match the emotion.

Anyone who knows anything about writing or story telling or the way people function under stress can tell you this---but no one here wants to hear anything except that Hillary is poo.

Since Obama has written best sellers, I can guarantee you as a writer and editor that he has not always written the "factual truth" because such a text would be unreadable. In order to convey the emotional truth of his story he has had to alter some things---sometime consciously and other times unconsciously to make the story that appears on the page resonate for the reader the same way that it resonated for him in real life. That is not called lying. It is called art.

[ecstatic]

28. Wasn't that debunked already?

At no point was Hillary ever in danger.

[Life Long Dem]

26. So we base our choice on this? What's next? How they met the babysitter?