NYC Letter: Quote Of The Day: Charles Payne

Day 129 of CHOPE

Q: Mr. Payne, early in June your great-nephew, President Barack Obama, will visit the former concentration camp Buchenwald, which you helped liberate at the end of the war. Will he be travelling in your footsteps?

I don't buy that. I was quite surprised when the whole thing came up and Barack talked about my war experiences in Nazi Germany. We had never talked about that before. This is a trip that he chose, not because of me I'm sure, but for political reasons.

Charles Payne,
Mr. Obama's great uncle on his mother's side,
an infantryman in the 89th Infantry Division
that liberated Ohdruf, a subcamp of Buchenwald
INTERVIEW May 29, 2009 (Spiegel)

I had a uncle who was one of the, who was part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz and liberate the concentration camps, and the story in our family was is that when he came home, he just went up into the attic and he didn’t leave the house for six months, right. Now obviously something had really affected him deeply but at that time there just weren’t the kinds of facilities to help somebody work through that kind of pain. That’s why you know the, this idea of making sure that every single veteran when they are discharged* are screened for post traumatic stress disorder and given the mental health services that they need, that’s why its so important.

Mr. Obama,
misremembering history and his family story
LAS CRUCES, New Mexico May 26, 2008
(MSNBC/CNN video here)

Q: At first Mr. Obama claimed that one of his family members was involved in the liberation Auschwitz. How did this misunderstanding come about?

Mr. Payne: He couldn't have gotten it from me since we had never talked about this particular episode in the war. My sister and her husband were both great storytellers and sometimes made up the details to go along with it. They told him about my deployment with the 89th Infantry Division and apparently they mixed up a few details. Of course it came out immediately that he was wrong since there are enough people in America who know that Auschwitz is in the East and that the camp was liberated by the Red Army.

If there is someone in your family who has been part of -- contributed to -- something historic and good, who will begrudge you the bragging rights on his behalf? [Pause.] But the brag requires that the facts are straight.

Our criticism here is two-fold. First, Mr. Obama could've just as easily made that phone call to his uncle before introducing "the family story" into public, political discourse. Second, as a courtesy, Mr. Obama should've made that phone call before exploiting his uncle's private painful experience.

It obviously was not a serious slip -- after all, Mr. Obama is president today -- but it was sloppy, especially since command of the facts could be had without much effort. And that tells us something.

CHOPE.

Opportunism. Exploitation. Kinda-sorta heartfelt.

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* Later identified by his adminsitration as prime emergent terrorist candidates.