In a previous piece, we studied three photographs of Barack Obama during his days at Columbia. In each photo, he wears what looks very much like a wedding ring. Some argued that he was wearing a school ring. Others have suggested a marriage to a certain high-born young lady who received a very brief mention in one of his autobiographiesNow we have more ring photos. These were snapped during his days at Occidental, in Southern California -- well before he met the lady mentioned above. However, he moved to Oxy in order to be near a young woman whom he met in Hawaii. She lived in Brentwood, which is an upper-class suburb of Los Angeles.
Odd thought: What if Brentwood Girl and Columbia Girl are actually one and the same? Perhaps she did her undergrad work at UCLA, which is quite near Brentwood.
I'm not sure how important this matter is. But it's interesting, so I'll continue to keep an eye on it.
That thing on his finger does not look like a class ring to me. Yet why would he lie about a previous marriage? There must be a simple explanation....
18 comments:
Why would he lie?
Why would you expect him to tell the truth about anything? You and I both have experience with people for whom lying is the first resort.
The only negative or embarrassing stuff we ever heard from Obama about Obama concerns his "hardscrabble" childhood and alleged drug use that he mentions in "Dreams." When he wrote it he was trying to manufacture some kind of "street cred."
But other than that if I was gonna guess it would be because he never told MO he was previously married.
I just hope Joe Cannon never gets on my case. ;)
Here is a photo taken when BO and Michelle were dating. Note that she is not wearing a ring, but he is.
http://www.dancewithshadows.com/celebrity/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/michelle-obama-8.jpg
All this underscore the extent to which Obama's bio has been scrubbed on its way to becoming a "narrative". we already know of people sworn to be quiet.
To expound on myiq2xu's question: Why would he lie? because he can.
Elliewyatt:
By the time Barack and Michelle were dating he was a graduate of Harvard and Columbia, but that looks like the same ring he wore back at Occidental College.
It looks like a wedding band, and he wears it like one. If he wore it for so many years, why did he stop? When he got married he could have put it on his right hand.
Like JC said - weird.
Why does he always look like he's posing for GQ?
Did he ever have aspirations of being a male model?
http://img.timeinc.net/time/photoessays/2008/obama_youth/obama_youth_04.jpg
oo, thanks for the link, Joseph...Time has some good ones of Obama smoking, too. Or rather posing with a cigarette, because it looks more like hamming it up.
Why didn't they put that one on their POTY cover? Heh.
Oh, and that can't have been a wedding ring if Michelle didn't know because of that picture where he's wearing the ring and she's not.
When I was younger I used to wear a ring all the time. It was my grandfathers. Unfortunately I lost it.
The very few men who wear rings for non-romantic reasons wear pinky rings.
I presume these photos look like GQ pieces because he was posing for an someone who was probably taking a photography class at Oxy. Pretty good work, actually.
myiq2xu~
I think everything about the guy is weird.
I would say, "Well, wouldn't his classmates at Columbia know if he was a married man?" But none of his classmates remember him, period. Weird.
He roomed with Paksitanis in Los Angeles. He roomed with a Pakistani in New York. A high school classmate, Greg Orme, said, "He would talk about people in Pakistan and was a lot more aware of Middle East politics than anybody I knew." What high school student in Hawaii in the late 1970s would talk about Pakistan???!! Weird. Weird.
WEIRD-
High school classmate, George Orme: "He had a worldly view. He would talk about people in Pakistan and was a lot more aware of Middle East politics than anybody I knew. He was following conflicts around the world and talked about it all the time."
Imad Husain a Pakistani and Obama's freshman roommate at Occidental
Mohammed Hasan Chandoo a wealthy Pakistani freind of Obama when he was a freshmam.
Wahid Hamid a wealthy Pakistani friend of Obama when he was a freshmam. Hamid and Obama traveled to Karachi, Pakistan after graduation from Occidental.
Sohale Siddiqi is identified as "Sadik" in Obama's memoir, Dreams From My Father, and is described as "a short, well-built Pakistani" who smoked marijuana, snorted cocaine and liked to party. Siddiqi was from Karachi, Pakistan, and Obama's roommate when he attended Columbia University. Siddiqi was not a student at Columbia (and illegally in the US at the time, per BO).
I know it's off marriage subject, but on the WEIRD subject.
Ellie - was he dating Michelle while married to someone else?
If he really was married before meeting the ward boss' daughter, I would guess that the reason he's not saying so is that he doesn't want to alienate his religious base. Many of them don't take too kindly to divorce.
madamab~
Nothing has ever been presented that would indicate that Bummer was married. The whole thing began with some commenter on a blog who pulled it out of thin air because he wore a ring.
Until there is anything other than pure speculation with zero backup at all, I'm gonna regard it as just silliness.
"Nothing has ever been presented that would indicate that Bummer was married. The whole thing began with some commenter on a blog who pulled it out of thin air because he wore a ring."
The blogger wore a ring...?
Just messin' with ya. I would say that men wearing rings is rare enough in this society, especially when Obama was a student, that a ring may be considered evidence in and of itself. Though hardly conclusive or even persuasive. I just think it is odd.
We also have the oddity of the love affair with the woman I call "Columbia Girl." Odd, because the affair broke off over racial problems, or so says Obama obliquely in "Dreams." Yet he does not tell the story at all, and alludes to the affair only much later, and very briefly at that.
I'd also like to know more about Brentwood Girl. She must have been really something to tempt Obama to move from Hawaii to California. (He didn't make the move for the sake of going to Occidental. Oxy isn't considered a great school, although it IS pricey.)
Odd caption under photo 9 of 12:
"For a while, Jack put the negatives in a safety-deposit box, so that they could not be used until after the election, when there would be no chance they could be used for a political purpose."
What political purpose did she think these photos would be used for? There's not much there to comment on, other than the mystery ring.
Joseph, I cannot defend or explain Bummer's oddball fashion ideas (what 19 year old in 1980 would wear that hat?), if that's what it was.
"I just think it's odd." I do too, but it makes me think he's creepy, not that he was married.
"the affair broke off over racial problems" or so BO says. I don't believe anything he says. She probably dumped his ass because he's CREEPY and he loves to paint it as "racial".
"He didn't make the move for the sake of going to Occidental. Oxy isn't considered a great school, although it IS pricey." He attended Oxy on FULL SCHOLARSHIP. Though his grades were "sub-par", he wrote in his book that he had let his grades slip in his final years of high school", one of his high school teachers described him as "a B-minus student".
How did he get a full scholarship??? Weren't there some deserving minority students who'd bothered to get GOOD grades??? Who wrote a nice fat check to Occidental for a new wing on a building so that Barry could attend on scholarship? He claims to have had offers from "several respectable colleges"... yeah, right.
Leon Redbone. And I'll repeat: watch Travolta in his dressing scene in SNF (it's on YouTube), no ring at first, but at last, and in italics! a ring on that finger.
It's probably just his dad's ring. He does seem to have a weird view for the man that abandoned him.
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