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The Daily Dish - 2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan

The Auschwitz Error: A Silver Lining

By The Daily Dish
May 28 2008, 2:49 AM ET

Yes, this occurred to me too:

The fact is that Obama has a proud American family heritage that stands in sharp contrast to the mental constructs of those intentionally uninformed multitudes who genuinely fear the prospect of the Presidency of the United States going to the phantom Hussein/Muslim/not-a-full-blooded-American candidate.

The fact that Obama’s great uncle "helped liberate a Buchenwald sub-camp in April 1945 as part of the 89th Infantry Division" is one example of Obama’s proud American family heritage. Thus, this simple, little-known fact becomes a powerful storyline that directly confronts a blatantly false storyline that the RNC hopes will continue circulating quietly via a million email forwards from now through November.

What I find interesting is this: Given the tendency of our culture and media to overemphasize gaffes and underemphasize facts, how better to get the facts of Obama’s family heritage reported than via a gaffe?

Obama needs to do more to communicate the facts about his relatives and his family's history.



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