What BO should have said:

Instead of the irritating press announcement which was hard to listen to, let alone believe, BO should have said:

I want to take this opportunity to say I was trying to protect my mother's reputation. My mother got knocked up before she was 18 years old. When she was three months pregnant with me, she supposidly got "married" to my dad, but dad was still married to a woman back in Kenya. So, technically, my dad was a bigomist from Kenya. This is common in Kenya. And he went on to marry twice more.

But, my mom was a "free spirit", studying Russian when she met my dad in her Russian class. Imagine studying Russian in 1960. Unless you were a commie or working for the CIA...

So, in order to spare my mother's reputation, I hoped the short form would be sufficient. Now, for all eyes to see, people can see that I am technically a bastard. And while being a bastard is not my fault, sadly, it is a very common condition today. And I would like to use this release of my birth certificate to bring to light the stigma of being a bastard. And like so many Mexican women who struggle across the border and give birth to their babies in El Paso, my mother gave birth to me in Hawaii. Was I an American because I was born in Hawaii (a new state) or because my mother was born in Kansas? My father was not an American. He was a 25 year old student who could be charged with rape because he knocked up my mother before she turned 18.

My mother stuggled to get a college degree with the help of her parents and food stamps. She later married an Indonesian. You can read the Time article for the glossy story of that part of her hard life.

That is what he should have said. Instead, he tried to gloat. wow. Another missed opportunity to encourage people to wait and have children when they are finished with college, and married.