“Well well well…” the post, true to form, begins. “Look whats surfaced. Lets see how long it takes for it to be taken down,” the apostrophe nihilist continued. “Until then, share the crap out of it!”
The image, allegedly depicting a “foreign student” ID of Obama during his days at Columbia University, has been fact-checked so many times the links correcting the meme fill at least two Google search pages. It displays the name “Barry Soetoro” and the title “Foreign Student” underneath.
There are reports that Barack Obama did go by the surname of his stepfather (whom Barack’s mother married in 1967 in Hawaii), when they lived in Indonesia for a short period before returning to Hawaii when Obama was 10 years old. (You can read more about this in Barack Obama: The Story by David Maraniss, whose front cover uses the same image found in this fake meme.)
As others have noted, the photoshopper who chose to spread this fake image was a bit careless. The student ID matches that of Thomas Lugert, who was so proud of attending the American Language Program at Columbia during the summer of ‘98 that he blogged about the occasion and posted an image of his ID.
Presumably, the dunderhead who photoshopped the ID card used Lugert’s as the format for the forgery, forgetting to change the student ID number in the process.
Furthermore, the image used of Obama comes from the ’90s, not the ’80s, when he attended Columbia. And lastly, as many have pointed out, Columbia did not start using these cards until 1996. (The photos on the cards are also colored, not black-and-white.)
But birtherism lives on in the hearts of many. “Is that our dumb ass ex president,” one conversation in the comment section begins:
“I stole it, let see if it’s removed.”
“They removed the first one and he reposted it and the second one stayed.”
“Prob a dumb friend who reported u.”
Thanks, internet.
If you have questions about this fact check, or would like to submit a request for another fact check, email Holmes Lybrand at [email protected] or the Weekly Standard at [email protected]. For details on TWS Fact Check, see our explainer here.
