Revising History

Ann, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham

I recently paid a visit to the Wikipedia page dealing with Barack Obama’s maternal grandparents, Madelyn and Stanley Dunham.  I quickly noticed that it had been changed since my last visit.  I don’t mean “updated,” I mean “changed.”  I wasn’t surprised because I’ve noticed that it has been changed repeatedly in the past.

Between when the page was created by GreekParadise on February 13, 2008 and October 31, 2008 there were hundreds of revisions (97 in March alone) made on a total of 84 different days by numerous users, but most of the revisions were made by a handful of users including the names Tvoz, GreekParadise, Boris Badinov44, Khoikhoi and  Americasroof.  The month of July belonged to “justmeherenow” who made 11 revisions on 7 different days, then faded away.

I’m not going to speculate on who these people are or what their motives might be.  I’ll let you do that.  But by scrolling through the revisions you will see:

While Obama’s mother Ann was pursuing projects around the world, Madelyn and Stanley raised Obama so that he could attend the Punahou School in Hawaii.

turn into:

When Barack was 10 and his mother Ann was employed on development projects in Indonesia and around the world helping women obtain microfinance, he decided to stay in Hawaii with his grandparents, Madelyn and Stanley Dunham. 

and eventually become:

After the Obama marriage fell apart, the young Barack spent four years with his mother and her second husband in Jakarta, Indonesia. He returned to the United States at age 10 to live with his maternal grandparents in the Makiki district of Honolulu and enrolled in the fifth grade at the Punahou School. The tuition fees for the prestigious preparatory school were paid with the aid of scholarships. Ann would later come back to Hawaii and pursue graduate studies; she eventually earned a Ph.D. in anthropology and went on to be employed on development projects in Indonesia and around the world helping impoverished women obtain microfinance. When she returned to Indonesia in 1977 for her Masters’ fieldwork, Obama stayed in the United States with his grandparents. Obama writes in his memoir, Dreams From My Father, “I’d arrived at an unspoken pact with my grandparents: I could live with them and they’d leave me alone so long as I kept my trouble out of sight.”