Barack Obama: The Future Is the Past

Despite her maternal solicitude for him, Oprah Winfrey is not Barack Obama's mama. A recent PBS documentary on genomes revealed that Oprah's lineage is 100% African, which is almost unheard of in this country. No white man ever defiled her black ancestors. She has that much in common with Barack Obama, who is the product of a biracial union. His late mother was from Kansas (like Dorothy) and his father from Kenya. Barack is descended on his mother's side from the family of Jefferson Davis, president of the CSA. His father's family were never slaves, though as Muslims (or philomuslims) they may have supplied the slavers. Obama Sr. resided in the U.S. long enough to acquire a doctorate from Harvard and beget Obama Jr. Barack Obama, therefore, is a first generation African-American. His "middle passage" consisted of relocating from Honolulu to Chicago via Jakarta. If reparations were ever paid to African-Americans, he wouldn't be on the receiving end. In fact, with his ties to Jefferson Davis, he might well be on the dispersing end, although. of course, he won't be dispensing his own money.

Barack(a) Hussein Obama's parents met at the University of Honolulu and were married shortly thereafter. It was a bigamous marriage because Obama's father never divorced his first wife in Kenya. His mother, named Stanley after her father — who had always wanted a son — was an early hippie and militant atheist. She may also have been a communist, though her friends from high school and college avoid that word, preferring instead "contrarian," "iconoclast," "off-center," "not standard issue," "liberal" and "fellow traveller" (the last probably being the most accurate description). Barack's father was a foreign exchange student from Kenya, who had dreams of becoming the next Jomo Kenyatta (he would have been better off studying at Moscow U. if that was his goal and so would we). The marriage of Barack's parents was opposed by both their families, but more stridently by his Kenyan relations than by Jefferson Davis' heirs. The patriarch of the Obama clan wrote to Stanley's parents accusing her of being a harridan who wanted to destroy his son's future prospects in Kenya. Although Obama Sr. decamped without his wife or son to Harvard and thence to Kenya, the "taint" of intermarriage (to a white, an American and a non-Muslim) did indeed make Obama Sr. a pariah at home. Many years later, a friend from his college days, Congressman Neil Abercrombie (D-Hw), visited Obama pere there and noted that he had become an alcoholic who talked only about his missed opportunities and never even asked about his ex-wife or son.

Barack was raised by his mother and maternal grandparents in Hawaii. He was in the fifth grade before he saw another black man. It was his father. He saw him at an airport stopover and never again. His mother, who had a penchant for exotic men, next married another foreign exchange student, this one an Indonesian Muslim named Lolo Soetoro, who was the father of Obama's half-sister Maya. Stanley femme followed her new husband to Jakarta, where Obama, now known as "Barry Soetoro," attended first a Catholic and then a Muslim school. He was listed as a Muslim on the registration form of the Strada Asisia Catholic School. He later transferred to Menteng School #1, ostensibly a "public school" but one with a mosque in its courtyard. Some have described it as a fundamentalist Islamic madrassa, but perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it taught the official religion like all state schools in Indonesia. "Barry" also accompanied his stepfather to mosque for Friday prayers. Barack once denied all this, but now merely claims never to have followed the Muslim religion. In his autobiography, he wrote that his father had been raised a Muslim but became a "confirmed atheist" like his mother. He cited his mother's atheism to insinuate that she would not have approved of a religious upbringing and also claimed that his stepfather was "a man who saw religion as not particularly useful" and supposedly incorporated elements of ancient animism (spirit worship) and Hinduism into his practice of Islam. It may have been Obama, however, who found it convenient to dilute his late stepfather's observance of Islamic practices with tales of his eating snakes "for their power" and other enormities. All this is a moot point: according to Islamic law, if your father is a Muslim, you are a Muslim; if you were born a Muslim, you will always be a Muslim. Of course, it would be the worst kind of religious bigotry to suggest that being a Muslim is inherently evil or outside the pale of civilization. This, however, is exactly what Obama suggests every time that he denies his religious upbringing or disassociates himself from the Muslim faith of his youth. At his madrassa nearly 40 years ago he was not taught to be a suicide bomber. That much should be obvious. But Obama won't credit his countrymen with enough sense to see that. Maybe he's right not to credit them.

"Barry" attended high school at an elite prep in Hawaii, whose students included the descendents of the Doles of canned pineapple fame. At school, he was on the basketball team and was known as "Barry O'Bomber," not because he was a Muslim suicide terrorist but because of his wicked long shots. His best friend and confidante was an older boy named Keith Kakugawa, who was also of mixed ancestry (Japanese/African). He joked in his autobiography that between them they comprised the only black at their high school. This friend would resurface 30 years later as a convicted cocaine dealer who allegedly attempted to blackmail Obama with damaging information from their youth. Since Obama has admitted his own alcohol and drug abuse in high school, it would really not be much of a stretch to suppose what it is that his friend has on him. No one confesses to have been a cokehead in high school unless he was actually much more than that.

At college, where he proudly proclaims he took a class on international relations, which comprises his sole expertise in that area, Obama was a mediocre student, much like George Bush, and, by his own admission, did not make the best of his educational opportunities but did have a good time. He continued his laid back approach in the Senate, where he officiously avoided taking a stand on any controversial issue or casting a vote that would define him as anything in particular. Obama has missed nearly 40% of votes in the Senate and has the worst record of any Democrat. The few times that he did deign to vote were enough to class him with the senate's most backward-looking liberals. It doesn't really seem that he has many principles which he is willing to display (much less defend) and his mantra of "change" conceals the fact that he is not prone to change himself. Perhaps the "change" he means is not doctrinal or institutional as much as pigmentational. Electing a president because he is black (or the closest electable alternative) is just as reprehensible as denying a qualified candidate the presidency because he is black. Hopefully Americans will not make either mistake.