With David Maraniss’ biography of Barack Obama about to be published, the New York Times dug up a piece by one of its reporters from January 2007 that shows the degree to which Obama’s fellow Harvard Law Review members had figured out the future U.S. president. Having listened to young Obama spin yarns about himself, as he would later do in Dreams From My Father, a Law Review skit had a mock Obama present the following autobiography:
I was born in Oslo, Norway, the son of a Volvo factory worker and part-time ice fisherman. My mother was a backup singer for Abba. They were good folks. In Chicago, I discovered I was black, and I have remained so ever since.
According to the Times, the mock Obama goes on to recount how he united warring students into “a happy, cohesive folk,” while “empowering all the folks out there in America who didn’t know about me by giving a series of articulate and startlingly mature interviews to all the folks in the media.”
The Times was quick to point out that, in addition to viewing Obama as a BS artist, his peers also thought he was a nice guy.
It seems to me that this is about how the “folks” view Obama these days.
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