The Obama Ex-Girlfriend Conspiracy Inevitably Falls Apart
May 02, 2012 5:25 pm ET by Ben Dimiero
For the past few years, much of the conservative echo chamber has thrived on exploring what they see as Barack Obama's mysterious, ominous past. The most prominent examples of this fixation have been the durable birth-certificate conspiracy and the increasingly exotic allegations that Barack Obama Sr. is not Obama's father (suggested "real" fathers have included Malcolm X and, as recently as last week, Frank Marshall Davis).
In a newly-released Vanity Fair piece adapted from his upcoming Obama biography, journalist David Maraniss details two of Obama's romantic relationships during his early 20s, complete with interviews of his ex-girlfriends. The article seemingly puts to rest conspiracies promoted by conservative big wigs about why none of Obama's exes have ever come forward. Rush Limbaugh asked this very question last year, citing "one of these email things" he had been sent.
In Dreams From My Father, Obama wrote about a romantic relationship he had with a woman in New York. The lack of a name (and the fact that no one had come forward to claim the mantle) led some creative conspiracy theorists to doubt her existence. Her presence in the book was one of the main pieces of "evidence" in WND columnist Jack Cashill's much-mocked theory that Bill Ayers is the true author of Dreams.
Cashill wrote in a 2010 WND column:
I was not the only one to have noticed Obama's curious silence on this issue. One correspondent of mine made a compelling case that Obama's mystery woman was drawn fully from the memory of Bill Ayers and based on the great love of Ayers's life, the late Diana Oughton.
Ayers was obsessed with Oughton who died in 1970 in a Greenwich Village bomb-factory blast. In "Fugitive Days," his 2001 memoir, he fixes on her in ways that had to discomfit the Weatherwoman he eventually settled for.
Physically, the woman of Obama's memory with her "dark hair, and specks of green in her eyes" evokes images of Oughton. As her FBI files attest, copies of which my correspondent sent me, Oughton had brown hair and green eyes.
Today, in the mad dash to make news of the Maraniss excerpt, Politico's Dylan Byers put up a misguided piece implying Obama had misled readers of his memoir by not explaining that the "New York girlfriend" in Dreams is actually a composite of Genevieve Cook -- one of the women Maraniss interviewed for his book and the focus of the Vanity Fair excerpt -- and another girlfriend from his early twenties.
Slate's David Weigel, who labeled Byers' post "one of the most ill-informed pieces of Drudge bait to come down the transom in a while," noted that Dreams actually opens with a disclaimer from Obama explaining that "[f]or the sake of compression, some of the characters that appear are composites of people I've known." (Byers has since updated his post to include this fact.)
Despite Obama's use of composite characters in Dreams not being anything new, conservatives are running with the Byers piece undoubtedly because it fits nicely into the "Obama is a liar hiding something about his weird past" theme they've been hammering for years.
It quickly hit the top of Drudge:
And is also being featured on Fox Nation (which dropped their pejorative "Left-Wing Politico" label to promote it):
Inevitably, the story found its way to Limbaugh. Earlier today on his show, Limbaugh told listeners that Byers "has uncovered an interesting fact" about Dreams From My Father and read from the Byers post. Limbaugh chastised Obama because he would "only admit" that characters in the book had been composites "after people have tried to find them." (Again, this is utterly false.)
Oh they can't cause the ladies signed agreements to never speak of the bliss of being his beard.
My God! Caught red-handed! So you thought you could fool us, Barack HUSSEIN Obama? I guess you didn't realize that only one person has ever had brown hair and green eyes.
Are republicans really this ignorant?
Dude, is that a serious question?
In all seriousness, it depends on to which republicans you're referring. The politicians? Maybe some. But most of them are not. The spindoctors and orderbarkers? No way. They definitely know better. The viewer/voters? Absofv<kinglutely. And therein lies the problem. You don't have to tell the truth to get skiddish, squirrel-like people scared enough to do whatever you tell them: you only have to make them THINK that you're telling the truth. Of course, it doesn't hurt if they are already gullible racists.
Yeah, that makes sense.
The rightwing nuttiness -- "Drudge bait" indeed, a perfect tag on outright stupidity -- amounts to a fogbank of petty peevishness. The plain shallow bigotry rightwingers ooze is idiocy on parade.
Why do they pick at petty lies and so shame themselves and their type? Larger truths of Obama's life experiences, and the containing context, is collected in evidence available to the haters.
The larger work has been compiled and curated by Wayne Madsen. Obama's family tree and the grove where it grows gets described in detail in Madsen's forthcoming book, of which about three chapters are pre-released here:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig11/madsen1.1.1.html
... in which is disclosed, for example, that Obama's grandmother worked several years alongside Tim Geithner's father at the Bank of Hawaii.
A second book (by Larry Sinclair) is already published and distributed, and sustained last month winning a protracted lawsuit in court that tried and failed to get it banned. Sinclair, in Chicago, describes homosexual engagements with Obama during the few years Obama was 'infiltrated' into African-American groups as an informant or 'snitch' for FBI and/or CIA targets in case files.
An interview with Sinclair is posted here:
http://newhampshireherald.com/sinclairinterview.html
and the book, Barack Obama & Larry Sinclair: Cocaine, Sex, Lies & Murder? is marketed here:
http://www.larrysinclair.org/2011/04/18/barack-obama-larry-sinclair/
There is irony that these biographical sketches which are ignored by righwing busybodies (including Drudge) portray Obama fostered and fashioned in rightwing style -- seemingly quite as much as one of their 'own'. Certainly Obama's behavior and president, in many ways carrying on Bush's banner, shows a developed personality consistent with description in the two books, (which corroborate each other, as well).
Yet the mouthy rightwingers prefer concocting lies and deceits pretending Obama is someone else, not himself, not like them.
(Meanwhile, the leftists and Obama '08 voters are saying, 'Who is this guy?', 'What is he thinking?', and, 'We have been fooled and betrayed!')
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Riiight- the bigger lies, like Sinclair's, are so much more trustworthy and relevant. Nothing to shame yourself about there, buying those in preference, right?
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Keep in mind that he wrote a narrative around Obama's PUBLICLY available schedule. He could've taken any member of any elected body and woven the same tapestry of baloney.
Randy
“Steven Goddard ... 0 Fans ... Become a fan ... 4 hours ago (10:54 PM) ... According to NOAA, there has been no warming in Maine since they started keeping records in 1895”
on
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shoshana-zuboff/global-warming-lightning-strikes_b_1471783.html
From his link:
Maine's temperatures rose 1.9 degrees Celsius in the last century and another 2.24 degree rise is projected by 2104.
Kind of flies in the face of their:
Field lacrosse or box lacrosse?=>
This is the best they've got when he REFUSES TO DIGNIFY OR LEGITIMIZE THE ACCUSTAION WITH A RESPONSE.
He's being "curiously slient."
No, you lot are just a bunch of dumbasses and he's tired of following up every cockamamey conspiracy theory you come up with.
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IMHO
UTOPIA
Whoooooooshhhh...
If I'm right, that was the sound of the point of this issue zooming over the head of lots of folks.
A month ago, I told my wife that if there are photos of pre-POTUS Barack Obama with a white woman, they're gonna pop up before November.
I think the "Obama lied in his memoirs" meme is a ploy to hide the real intent of these slimeballs.
Well, if the wingnuts want to persist in making this case, it'll undermine their own beloved birth certificate controversy.
Consider: if either Malcolm X {born Malcolm Little in Omaha, NE} or Davis {born in Arkansas City, KS} was Obama's father, that would mean BOTH of his parents were born on US soil -- rendering any further demands for the President's birth certificate unnecessary . . .
I was born in Omaha Nebraska too. But some say I have a Kenyan Birth Certificate.
Did anyone else read The Wayne Madsen link that Meremark tossed up there in his post?
The Story of Obama: All in the Company
That thing has more twists and turns than the worlds craziest roller coaster!
I think that is the same article I was directed to by a RW conspiracy theorist during the 2008 campaign.
Sheesh.
Your text to link here...
(Crossing my fingers that I'm doing the link thing right- this my first stab at one)
(Actually, I'd be happy to feel like a 40-year old again)
BTW I'm 62 and it's not too bad.
BTW- I'm 55, and, you're right, it's not really all that bad. Still got all my hair, no gray in it, reasonably fit- guess I should count my blessings instead of my ills, eh?
(Warning, though- Ed's site contains some pretty salty language, both by him and his commenters- so, if that sort of thing offends you more than stupidity, or you're at work-BEVARRE! BEVARRE!- as Bela Lugosi once said.