Auschwitz -- the Coca-Cola of concentration camps

Occam’s razor must be rusty beyond use at this point.

Did Barack Obama really misspeak when he said that his uncle/great uncle helped to liberate Auschwitz instead of Buchenwald-Ohrduf?

Well, what would be Obama’s motivation to lie, especially since every American pundit -- even googley-eyed Glenn Beck -- knows that the Soviets, not the Americans, liberated Auschwitz? (Contrary to what you might think after watching a segment of Jay Leno’s Jaywalking, Americans are aces on current events and world history!)

Perhaps Obama thought to himself: Jesus, what’s the point of having an uncle/great uncle who really did assist in the liberation of a Nazi camp if it’s not the top-brand labor camp?

And Obama the poseur just couldn’t resist. Auschwitz is the Coca-Cola of concentration camps. Buchenwald is an unchilled Pepsi. Ohrduf is a no-name generic that’s long past its “Best by” date. So Auschwitz it was.

Or perhaps Obama simply misspoke.

Fortunately, news cycles die and life goes on.

At least Obama isn’t delusional, something the American media -- all-powerful in crushing the life out of a simple misstatement -- couldn’t quite grasp about Ronald Reagan during his presidency.

Recall that ol' Dutch frequently made arguments about history based on movies he half-recalled. He thought he'd liberated concentration camps. [Reagan was stationed in Hollywood for the entire war.--GN] He invented what he called "a verbal message" from the Pope in support of his Central America policies, news to everyone in Vatican City. In 1985, Reagan one day announced that the vicious apartheid regime of P.W. Botha had already "eliminated the segregation that we once had in our own country."

Not only did Reagan make things up, he also forgot some things that most of us consider pretty important. [Reagan biographer Edmund] Morris, for instance, lets us in on the astonishing fact that the President not only did not know his own Secretary of Housing and Urban Development--no big whoop, as the guy was, after all, black--but that Mr. Family Values also failed to recognize his own son (his own son!) while attending his graduation. If any of us had a parent given to such behavior, we might feel compelled to look into some sort of institutionalized care, if only for his own protection.

In all fairness to Reagan, however, it was only his adopted son he didn’t recognize.