What Context? Whose Context?

As many of you know, Ron Suskind’s book Confidence Men exposes the doubles of Barack Obama and his band.  Among the many criticisms are that the President provides no leadership and that he and his group form their allegiances and allocate support based on identity—mostly a narrow notion of male, elitist identity.

How to counter that unflattering view of Barack and his boys?  The administration, of course, complains that Suskind took information out of context.  They could not use any other excuse to explain away the information, since Obama had given the Pulitzer Prize winning author carte blanche to conduct the interviews on which he based his book.

On the one hand, the demand for attention to context is quite reasonable.  We all have had moments when we suffered from out-of-context quotes.  On the other hand, how does one determine the context?  Should the challenged quote have included the sentence before it?  The sentence after it?  Should the quote have included previous or subsequent paragraphs, or chapters?  What about comments that the speaker had made after the interview ended?

To my way of thinking, the relevant parameters of context depend on the integrity and consistency of the person being quoted.  A speaker who clearly, honestly and reliably says what he believes is easy to accurately and fairly quote.  A speaker whose remarks deviate widely from day to day or audience to audience cannot be easily quoted.  The quoting person can never be sure what the speaker means nor whether the comments are real or contrived.  In short, whenever a writer attempts to document what a Barack Obama type says—a dark triad personality type characterized by traits of Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism—the writer must consider the speaker's personality and purposes more than his words.

Our manipulative, conniving, arrogant President has proven repeatedly that we cannot trust his words.  Whether he is speaking about governmental transparency, the United States economy, international relations, or his own racial identity, Barack Obama double speaks incessantly. Honesty and reliability begins with acknowledging who we are—the whole us, flattering and unflattering, black and white.  If Obama is ever able to unapologetically and unfailingly refer to himself as biracial, rather than black, he will have gained enough credibility for me to listen to whatever else he has to say.

Context starts with personal identity and proceeds from there.