David Maraniss reveals lie after fib after stretcher after prevarication told by the future president in Barack Obama: The Story, "a deeply researched, 600-page study of the president's ancestry and early life."

And how do the president's supporters defend his approach to the truth? Here's a representative response, from "a noted professor":

Gerald Early, a noted professor of English literature and African-American studies at Washington University in St. Louis, agreed. "It really doesn't matter if he made up stuff," Early told Fox News. "I mean, after all, it's like you going to a psychiatrist and you make up stuff, and the psychiatrist can still psychoanalyze you because they're your lies."

What, then, does that make us, the American public? Psychoanalysts in Barack Obama's psychodrama, his quest to make himself whole? It's always about him, isn't it, the presidency reduced to a psychiatrist's couch so a sick man can make sense of his life.

"Autobiographies are not really good sources if you're looking for absolute complete factual accounts of someone's life," agreed Professor Early. "Autobiographies serve another kind of purpose for the person writing the book. I don't think it much matters whether Barack Obama has told the absolute truth in Dreams From My Father. What's important is how he wanted to construct his life."

My my, noted professor, how postmodern. I mean, truth, absolute truth - only a Pilate would care, right? If the ends are noble, do whatever it takes. "What's important is how he wanted to construct his life." Sounds like a grifter's epitaph.

Henry Percy is the nom de guerre for a technical writer living in Arizona. He may be reached at saler.50d[at]gmail.com