The Huckabee Kenyan Debacle

So Mike Huckabee, in the middle of a radio interview, misspoke about Obama's childhood and put him in Kenya as a kid. Voila, Huck's a birther! Even if he spoke against them in his book. Here's what got him in trouble:

"One thing that I do know is his having grown up in Kenya, his view of the Brits, for example, (is) very different than the average American," Huckabee said, pointing to Obama's decision in 2009 to remove a bust of former Prime Minister Winston Churchill from the Oval Office.

"The bust of Winston Churchill, a great insult to the British," Huckabee said. "But then if you think about it, his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather . he probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather."

His spinmeister then made everything worse--more on that dumbness in a minute--but there's more dumbness in this story. Let's take it one at a time.

Huffpuff pointed to a Yahoo 'fact check' page (yes) stating the obvious--that Obama spent the first year of his life in Seattle, Washington, then back to Hawaii, then to Indonesia, where he *might* have had a mysterious step-sister and perhaps was adopted by Lolo Soetoro and issued an Indonesian passport (nobody will fact check that), then moved back to Hawaii to attend a private school with his socialist-communist grandparents and mentor, the communist Frank Marshall Davis.

OK they didn't quite put it that way.

They basically regurgitated the narrative from Dreams from his father, which according to biographer David Remnick was not exactly a precise rendering of history but close enough for government work (and anyone who claims otherwise is a racist hack). But we must blame Huck for all this confusion, he's a Republican and clearly a racist birfer for not knowing!

Chances are he probably remembered the last media stories on the Churchill bust, which indicated it had been 'returned' to the British. In 2009 the Telegraph said it had been moved to the British Ambassador's residence. In 2010 even Media Matters, while slamming Glenn Beck, did not report the bust being located in Obama's residence. But the 'fact check' from Yahoo says [emphasis added]:

He failed to note that Obama replaced the Oval Office fixture with a bust of one of his American heroes, President Abraham Lincoln, and moved the Churchill bust to the White House residence.

First, what the hell does Lincoln have to do with the British? Second, if the bust is now in the White House residence and not the British Ambassador's residence how did it get there? Did Obama steal it back?! Arg, racist! OK, ok, but where's the darned bust?! There's a Yahoo Answers page on the web asking whether the bust was returned and Yahoo provided no answer. How can Yahoo fact check and not answer their own answers page?

Besides, one would think such a move--the re-return of the bust--would be a huge public story endorsed by our mainstream media gatekeepers triggering a 60 Minutes investigation or a proclamation from Linda Douglass. Do we need to send somebody to fact check the fact checkers? Or shall we just form a small crowd and yell "Yahoos at Yahoo News Lie! We want the truth" ala Wisconsin?!

The odd thing is Huckabee was actually trying to cut the president some slack by empathizing what it must have been like for grandpa Obama to live under imperialist Brit-thug rule. This is what happens when Republicans try to empathize.

Actually the gaffe wasn't so bad, that is, until Huck's spin office stepped in and tried to save the day by offering a completely absurd explanation--that he really meant Indonesia. Since Huck mentioned the Mao Mao Mau Mau revolution that makes absolutely no sense and reeks of a desperate, well, lie. An honest answer would have been more presidential, at least for a Republican (the inverse does not apply because Democrats mean well, even when they lie).

Here's an after-the-fact suggestion for a statement: "while speaking about Obama returning the bust of Churchill I misspoke about him 'growing up' in Kenya; the point I was making was that his Kenyan father and grandfather might have had reason to dislike the Brits, and maybe that rubbed off on Obama, Jr. As far as I know Obama was born in Hawaii, no matter what Governor Abercrombie says. Peace, out".

Too late now, though. Oh well, hey, Fox News is a good living.