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In 1999, Snopes documented the below-transcribed story about an alleged correspondence between a lawyer seeking a government-backed mortgage loan on behalf of a client and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), the agency that administers such loans. The tale recounted above is an embellished version of a piece of legal humor that is periodically dusted off and circulated anew, always as a true story. In 2006, it was updated with references to Hurricane Katrina and set loose again, and, since 2008, it has circulated as an account of a case supposedly handled by former President Barack Obama. Internet-circulated and even Hurricane Katrina-specific versions notwithstanding, this piece of humor originated at least as far back as the 1930s. In its original form, the tale was a joke about Southerners poking fun at New York city slickers rather than a satire of government bureaucrats. You can see that play out in the below-displayed example from a 1955 legal tome (in which the letter is supposedly directed at an ignorant buyer rather than a bureaucracy-bound government lending agency): The earliest version of this item we’ve turned up so far appeared in a 1936 Wall Street Journal article as an example proffered in a book written by Alfred Reuel Horr, a Cleveland Chamber of Commerce president: The same tale also appeared in shortened form in this excerpt from a 1990 toastmasters' handbook:
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