Early Obama Letter Confirms Inability to Write

[Geee]

American Thinker:

On November 16, 1990, Barack Obama, then president of the Harvard Law Review, published a letter in the Harvard Law Record, an independent Harvard Law School newspaper, championing affirmative action.

Although a paragraph from this letter was excerpted in David Remnick's biography of Obama, The Bridge, I had not seen the letter in its entirety before this week. Not surprisingly, it confirms everything I know about Barack Obama, the writer and thinker.

Obama was prompted to write by an earlier letter from a Mr. Jim Chen that criticized Harvard Law Review's affirmative action policies. Specifically, Chen had argued that affirmative action stigmatized its presumed beneficiaries.

The response is classic Obama: patronizing, dishonest, syntactically muddled, and grammatically challenged. In the very first sentence Obama leads with his signature failing, one on full display in his earlier published work: his inability to make subject and predicate agree.

"Since the merits of the Law Review's selection policy has been the subject of commentary for the last three issues," wrote Obama, "I'd like to take the time to clarify exactly how our selection process works."

If Obama were as smart as a fifth-grader, he would know, of course, that "merits ... have." Were there such a thing as a literary Darwin Award, Obama could have won it on this on one sentence alone. He had vindicated Chen in his first ten words.

Although the letter is less than a thousand words long, Obama repeats the subject-predicate error at least two more times. In one sentence, he seemingly cannot make up his mind as to which verb option is correct so he tries both: "Approximately half of this first batch is chosen ... the other half are selected ... "

Another distinctive Obama flaw is to allow a string of words to float in space. Please note the unanchored phrase in italics at the end of this sentence:

"No editors on the Review will ever know whether any given editor was selected on the basis of grades, writing competition, or affirmative action, and no editors who were selected with affirmative action in mind." Huh?

The next lengthy sentence highlights a few superficial style flaws and a much deeper flaw in Obama's political philosophy.

[nickydog]

Another confirmation of what we already knew.

[Pepper]

Geee!

 

It'd be funny if it weren't so darn serious in terms of impact.

 

from a commenter there:

 

Schmutzli [Moderator] Today 02:19 AM

This explains why Obama's educational transcripts are more closely guarded than the formula for Coke or the recipe for Kentucky Fried Chicken. I am convinced they are mediocre at best; likely containing a number of nebulous pass/fail "passes". Of course, we do have Obama's own statement that he has written two books, "and I wrote them myself". At least Nixon and LBJ can rest knowing their AA efforts were so successful they produced a president. The nation, however, is no better for it.

 

 

Geee!

 

Turns out that this letter has been around for a year or two. Like a lot of evidence about Obama. All the warning signs were there - just ignored.

 

See here

 

Harvard Law Review Entire letter: Record Retrospective: Obama on affirmative action