Why would Obama pretend to have been born in Kenya?

I asked this question the other day, when Breitbart broke the news of that literary agent's brochure that said Obama was born in Kenya. I said:

Where's the advantage in being seen as African African? It certainly isn't a way to get affirmative action from law school admissions and appointments committees. They may crudely care mainly about the way their classrooms look and take advantage of African African applicants, but the theories of affirmative action (especially the legal ones) have to do with black people who come from the American culture with its history of discrimination, prejudice, and disadvantage.

Mark Steyn has a good answer: Obama had reason not to want to be seen as having been born in Hawaii:

After all, if your first book is an exploration of racial identity and has the working title “Journeys in Black and White,” being born in Hawaii doesn’t really help. It’s entirely irrelevant to the twin pillars of contemporary black grievance — American slavery and European imperialism. To 99.99 percent of people, Hawaii is a luxury-vacation destination and nothing else. Whereas Kenya puts you at the heart of what, in an otherwise notably orderly decolonization process by the British, was a bitter and violent struggle against the white man’s rule. Cool! The composite chicks dig it, and the literary agents.

That reminds me of what Rush Limbaugh said yesterday: "Maybe this business he was born in Kenya, maybe it was just compression, you know, like his girlfriend in the book.  Maybe he was just writing it himself as a composite." But Rush's bigger point was:

If you're Barack Obama, wouldn't you rather... people get all absorbed and sidetracked on some blurb in a literary pitch years and years ago?  I can see Obama and his boys sitting in the White House saying, "You know, let's have some fun with the birthers. Let's go ahead and release this thing...."