{"id":4271,"date":"2011-07-15T01:18:44","date_gmt":"2011-07-15T05:18:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/?p=4271"},"modified":"2011-07-15T00:45:17","modified_gmt":"2011-07-15T04:45:17","slug":"ny-times-white-house-declines-to-deny-obama-lied-about-his-mother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/07\/ny-times-white-house-declines-to-deny-obama-lied-about-his-mother","title":{"rendered":"NY Times: White House declines to deny Obama lied about his mother"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Jonathan S. Tobin<\/strong>
\nCommentary Magazine<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

During the 2008 campaign and throughout the subsequent debate over his health care legislation, President Obama used his mother\u2019s experience as a cancer patient fighting to get coverage to pay for treatment for what her insurer said was a pre-existing condition as an emotional argument to sway skeptics. However, a new book by New York Times<\/em> reporter Janny Scott has revealed this story appears to be a fabrication.<\/p>\n

The Times<\/em> reports today (in a story buried on page 14 rather than on the front page) that during the course of researching her book,\u00a0A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama\u2019s Mother<\/em>, Scott uncovered correspondence showing \u201cthe 1995 dispute concerned a Cigna disability insurance policy and that her actual health insurer had apparently reimbursed most of her medical expenses without argument.\u201d In response to inquiries, \u201ca White House spokesman chose not to dispute either Ms. Scott\u2019s account or Mr. Obama\u2019s memory, while arguing that Mr. Obama\u2019s broader point remained salient.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, Obama lied in order to make a political point.<\/p>\n

The early death of the president\u2019s mother was a tragedy for her family, but Obama\u2019s manipulation of the narrative about her life was utterly unscrupulous. While her battle for disability coverage probably was stressful, that has nothing to do with her son\u2019s subsequent efforts to impose a government health care plan on the nation. Moreover, it should also be pointed out the president is in no position to claim his untrue account of his mother\u2019s problems was the result of a misunderstanding about a matter in which he was not involved. According to Scott, the correspondence says his mother referred to her son as her attorney in these matters.<\/p>\n

For those with short memories, it\u2019s important to recall that Obama has used this story repeatedly, including during one of the presidential debates with opponent John McCain.\u00a0 During that debate he said:<\/p>\n

For my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they\u2019re saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don\u2019t have to pay her treatment, there\u2019s something fundamentally wrong about that.<\/p>\n

CLICK HERE to read Commentary magazine article<\/a>
\nTo read New York Times article, CLICK HERE<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Jonathan S. Tobin Commentary Magazine\u00a0\u00a0 During the 2008 campaign and throughout the subsequent debate over his health care legislation, President Obama used his mother\u2019s experience as a cancer patient fighting to get coverage to pay for treatment for what her insurer said was a pre-existing condition as an emotional argument to sway skeptics. However,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":270,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[2201],"class_list":["post-4271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-news"],"yoast_head":"\nNY Times: White House declines to deny Obama lied about his mother<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/07\/ny-times-white-house-declines-to-deny-obama-lied-about-his-mother\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"NY Times: White House declines to deny Obama lied about his mother\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"by Jonathan S. Tobin Commentary Magazine\u00a0\u00a0 During the 2008 campaign and throughout the subsequent debate over his health care legislation, President Obama used his mother\u2019s experience as a cancer patient fighting to get coverage to pay for treatment for what her insurer said was a pre-existing condition as an emotional argument to sway skeptics. However,…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/07\/ny-times-white-house-declines-to-deny-obama-lied-about-his-mother\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-07-15T05:18:44+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2011-07-15T04:45:17+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"NY Times: White House declines to deny Obama lied about his mother","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/07\/ny-times-white-house-declines-to-deny-obama-lied-about-his-mother","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"NY Times: White House declines to deny Obama lied about his mother","og_description":"by Jonathan S. Tobin Commentary Magazine\u00a0\u00a0 During the 2008 campaign and throughout the subsequent debate over his health care legislation, President Obama used his mother\u2019s experience as a cancer patient fighting to get coverage to pay for treatment for what her insurer said was a pre-existing condition as an emotional argument to sway skeptics. However,…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/07\/ny-times-white-house-declines-to-deny-obama-lied-about-his-mother","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2011-07-15T05:18:44+00:00","article_modified_time":"2011-07-15T04:45:17+00:00","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/07\/ny-times-white-house-declines-to-deny-obama-lied-about-his-mother","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/07\/ny-times-white-house-declines-to-deny-obama-lied-about-his-mother","name":"NY Times: White House declines to deny Obama lied about his mother","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-07-15T05:18:44+00:00","dateModified":"2011-07-15T04:45:17+00:00","author":{"@id":""},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/07\/ny-times-white-house-declines-to-deny-obama-lied-about-his-mother#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/07\/ny-times-white-house-declines-to-deny-obama-lied-about-his-mother"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/07\/ny-times-white-house-declines-to-deny-obama-lied-about-his-mother#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"NY Times: White House declines to deny Obama lied about his mother"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/270"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4271"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4271\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4273,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4271\/revisions\/4273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}