Halfway thru the book he quotes a long monologue he offered to Auma, his half sister from Kenya, visiting him in Chicago, about a white girl in New York who "I loved." Obama went out with the girl for a year, met her privileged family at their country home. The two broke up over racial issues. The story is beautifully told; Obama is an astonishing writer.My questions: Who's the girl? Why hasn't anyone in the media tried to track her down?
But it I found it weird and jarring to learn about this love affair nearly 100 pages after its actual place in the chronology, his New York chapters, when he had said nothing about it. And in a book filled with pseudonyms, the girl doesn't even rate a pseudonym. I wondered whether Obama still pined for her. Also a little strange that in a racial narrative, in which Obama anatomizes his feelings about his blackness at many turns, he's failed to tell us that he fell in love with a white woman.
It's not that I'm intensely keen to intrude upon the woman's privacy -- although one must admit that she would be well-positioned to shed light on Obama's mysterious New York episode. (How did he get into Columbia? How did he pay for his travels?) But the media's disinterest in her is as odd as Obama's attitude toward her.
Suppose Sarah Palin had written an autobiography which includes glancing reference to a romance with an unnamed black man, along with the tantalizing admission that the affair had ended over "racial issues." How would the mainstream media have reacted? You know damned well that journalists would have done anything -- up to and including bribery, stake-outs and threats of homicide -- to discover the identity of that individual. They would never have allowed Palin's version of events to stand as final.
Why the differing standards? Something tells me that there's a story there.
16 comments:
The media aren't too interested in investigating ANYTHING about Obama.
Are they are afraid of what they might discover?
Either the woman is just another fabrication, or she comes from a family Obama would be unwise to piss off (or subject to any kind of scrutiny). My vote is for the former explanation.
It is profoundly ra cist to break off a relationship with a black person because of his/her race. Breaking off a relationship with a white woman because of her race, is obviously a source of pride.
Is Vera Baker white or black?
She doubtless doesn't remember him anyway, just as 400 of his Columbia classmates do not recall him at all.
You an artist right? Can you meld Sweet Bird of Youth with The Human Stain? I didn't read the Obiography - does he prejudge a lot like Holden Caulfield? Cut some slack, there was ugly history about high-profile women - Inger Stevens, Jean Seberg. Did you see the Jim Brown interview? (He didn't mention Fingers, but he alluded to it.)
I sure hope it wasn't Caroline Kennedy.
-- Boston Boomer
He leaves out of his book what would seem to be very important, compelling issues.
Upon arriving in New York to attend Columbia, he goes for coffee with his Pakistani friend/roommate identified as "Sadik". (excerpt from Dreams)
______________________
"Tell me, Barack. What brings you to our fair city?”
I tried to explain. I had spent the summer brooding over a misspent youth, I said-the state of the world and the state of my soul. “I want to make amends,” I said. “Make myself of some use.”
____________________
WTF??? He spent the summer "brooding"? He does NOT mention that he had spent three weeks pheasant hunting in his friend's country??? No, we had to find that out from a private San Francisco fundraiser held 25 years later to illustrate how deep his foreign policy experience is by practicing "brooding".
I am more curious about his teachers and classmates who we don't hear from. I am sure if it was flattering memories the media would never shut up about it and a move would come out about it. Only person who remembered him was from International Buss. And he contradicted Obama's versions of it.
When are uyou going to cum clean Maggot? I read "somewhere" that you have a fixation, nay, an obsession with having sex with porcupines. Come clean Oh peddler in smut. Face the Mahler music and "get over it"
There was no girl! If he had a "special" someone, I'm pretty sure it was a guy. Why do you think there are so many big gaps in his bio?
anon 8:30 --
Look, leola, I've known for a while that you were one of my "special friends." Please, you are a very sick woman. You need to get psychiatric help. I'm not saying this to be hurtful; I mean it.
hey Joseph no fair--- i never send you anonymous comment, and usually leave my tinfoil hat ramblings in iamb or hetrameter ...not with misspelled use of the verb to come, nor maggots. Of course I know you owe me nothing, and that I am not welcomed here, but please don't attribute that kind of crap to me. Thank you.
Not you. Leola McConnell. The crazy weightlifter lady who had that story about Bush. She went through a period where she was obsessively sending me weird, threatening email. I got a good whiff of her style, and I'm pretty adept at recognizing these things. The ISP is confirmation.
"Maggot" is one of her favored words.
I'm with Lauren -- she is likely a he. If there were a woman, and she decided not to talk, at least one of her friends would talk, if not her family. When guys with great smiles do not date women, it is usually because they are dating other guys with great smiles. Nothing wrong with that -- just wish he did not have to hide it.
Happy Thanksgiving to all, and best thoughts and wishes for those in India. The attacks are really terrible.
djmm
someone (I honestly cannot remember who) posted a picture a couple of months ago of Obama from his years at Columbia in which he is wearing a wedding ring. This blogger suggested that he was "married" to his male roommate. Maybe, instead he was married to this "white girl".
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