On Friday, 2 March 2007, an article in the
Baltimore Sun mentioned some of the information
available at
http://www.wargs.com/political/obama.html.
The Sun article is (or was) available at
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/politics/bal-te.obama02mar02,0,3453027.story.
Several other newspapers (such as the Chicago Tribune) reprinted
the article, while others (such as the New York Times)
summarized it, with varying degrees of accuracy (the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution, for example, stated falsely that I had
"announced" something).
Some link compilers,
such as the Huffington Post and the Drudge Report, carried a
link to the Sun article for a couple of days. According to a
family friend, Rush Limbaugh did me the honor of mis-pronouncing my name
on his radio show,
Bill Maher made reference to my findings in one of his monologues,
and
http://news.centergen.ru/index.php?a=do_print&t=246,
in an article about
Барак Обама,
cited the work of
эксперт по
генеалогии
Вильям Адамс
Рейтвайзнер.
Ah, my fifteen seconds of fame.
All of this generated some commentary in the blogosphere and
some email correspondence.
Most of those who sent email to me
were interested in learning more about their own
ancestry. Some who wrote were contributing information which would
improve the content of various other pages on my website. But several
who wrote appear to have been impelled to express themselves, in their
various levels of sobriety and lucidity. This page preserves the most
entertaining of those.
Email correspondence from:
Most of the commentary in the blogosphere was not seen by me, but
http://startsnitching.blogspot.com
named me "Snitch of the Week: 2/25 - 3/3",
and the title of the entry at
Villainous Company was "Did Obama Own Yo' Mama?".
The blog at
http://cherrylfloyd-miller.blogspot.com
was brought to my attention by a friend. It says, in part:
And did I say yet that Democratic Presidential hopeful Barak Obama's
family owned slaves? In this country, I'm not really sure that this
family history works for him or against him ... Hmmm.
The researcher who is digging around in the dirt for Obama's roots is
William Addams Reitwiesner [http://www.wargs.com/] (Ungh-hungh, who
hired him??? And why is he so dern interested in that? Didn't Edward P.
Jones teach him in a fantastical sort of way, that it is/was possible
for blacks to own other blacks? I could write a novel about my opinions
of Reitwiesner even doing this research, but that's another blog entry.
My question is, who is going to do the research on Reitwiesner? Not the
neatly manicured genealogical research -- he's alread taken care of that
for you -- but the real stuff?)
So when someone does "the research on Reitwiesner -- the real stuff"
(whatever that might mean), then I guess I'll know who to thank.
Later, there was more. For example, on 16 October 2007,
Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Dick Cheney, gave an interview to
MSNBC about her new book, Blue Skies, No Fences. In the
interview she mentions that her husband is an eighth cousin of Barack
Obama.
A few nights later, on the Tonight Show, Jay Leno discussed
the relationship with Sen. Obama,
(who has since added a reference to the relationship into his
standard stump speech),
and later in the month (26 October 2007),
Larry Kudlow discussed the relationship
with Vice President Cheney on MSNBC's Kudlow & Company.
While none of the participants (Mr. or Mrs. Cheney, Mr. Obama,
or any of their interviewers) mentioned me or my
webpage, some folks found their way there, and some email
correspondence ensued.
For example:
On Friday 2 November 2007, the Washington Post published an article
on some relatives of Hillary Clinton.
The article cited my website, which led to further correspondence.
For example:
William Addams Reitwiesner
wargs@wargs.com
