I read the description of an alleged angry and racially divisive phone call by Michelle Obama to an outfit called African Press International yesterday, but didn’t know what to make of it.

Today, the post is gaining steam and being linked widely across blogs.  One of those is Newsbusters, which investigated API and found that the organization “has been in existence for over two years and has filed over a thousand stories.” API lists their correspondents on its front page, and also lists contact telephone numbers in both Great Britain and Norway.  To me, this gives the organization at least a little credibility.  It’s hard to believe that API would establish a two year physical presence in two countries and then risk it all by making up a story out of whole cloth.

So we’ll take a look at the allegation with a grain of salt.

According to API, Michelle Obama called them at some undisclosed time complaining that the organization was helping to “spread rumours created by American bloggers and other racist media outlets in their efforts to damage a black man’s name.”

When API told her that our online news media was only relaying what the American Bloggers and other media outlets had discovered through their investigations, Mrs Obama was angered and she came out loud with the following: “African press International is supposed to support Africans and African-American view,” and she went to state that, “it is strange that API has chosen to support the racists against my husband. There is no shame in being adopted by a step father. All dirt has been thrown onto my husband’s face and yet he loves this country. My husband and I know that there is no law that will stop him from becoming the president, just because some American white racists are bringing up the issue of my husband’s adoption by His step father. The important thing here is where my husband’s heart is at the moment. I can tell the American people that My husband loves this country and his adoption never changed his love for this country. He was born in Hawaii, yes, and that gives him all the right to be an American citizen even though he was adopted by a foreigner,” says Michelle Obama on telefon to API.

Would Michelle Obama use the phrase “American white racists?”  I don’t know for sure, but it seems doubtful. If this is an actual retelling of an actual phone call, there are obviously some things lost in translation.  “American white racists” is presented as a quote from Obama.

On Farakhan and his ministry, Mrs Obama told API that it was unfortunate that Mr Farakhan came out the way he did supporting her husband openly before the elections was over. That was not wholehearted support but one that was calculated to convince the American people that my husband will support the growth of muslim faith if he became the president, adding “even if my husband was able to prove that he is not a Muslim, he will not be believed by those who have come out strongly to destroy his chances of being the next President. Do real people expect someone to deny a religion when 80 percent of his relatives are Muslims?; Mrs Obama asked.

Mrs Obama asked API to write a good story about her husband and that will earn API an invitation to the innoguration ceremony when, as she put it , her husband will be installed as the next President of the United States of America next year.

As I said at the outset, this allegation is dubious.  But there is evidence to support its veracity, and it’s out there and getting more widespread so I thought it worthy of a little attention.

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