January 28, 2007

Barack Obama's Polygamous Pa Was Straight Out of John Updike's The Coup

The Daily Mail's investigative report into the true story of Barack Obama Sr., the man mythologized by Barack Obama Jr., in his bestseller Dreams from My Father, reveals a life story remarkably similar to the fictional life of the narrator of John Updike's spectacular 1978 novel of Africa, The Coup.

Updike's Col. Ellellou was born into rural poverty in Africa, married a local girl from the village, wound up at a U.S. college, where he bigamously added a white second wife to his collection, then returned to Africa, embarked on a political career, and accumulated two more wives. Updike has a son-in-law and a daughter-in-law who are black Africans, so his insights into Africa are founded on deep thought.


A drunk and a bigot [sic - should be "bigamist"] - what the US Presidental hopeful HASN'T said about his father...

It is a classic story of the American dream made real: an impoverished Kenyan goatherd rising to become a brilliant Harvard-educated economist. On the way he fights racial prejudice at home and corruption at work, survives the heartbreak of a broken relationship and, despite it all, leads the fight to rid Africa of its colonial legacy.

This extraordinary story is told by US Presidential hopeful Barack Obama as he recalls the life of the man who inspired him to political success - his father. Mr Obama's book, Dreams From My Father, is flying off the shelves of US book stores, exciting and astonishing readers in equal measure. It is a bestseller, and no wonder - because the story just gets better and better. …

Yet an investigation by The Mail on Sunday has revealed that, for all Mr Obama's reputation for straight talking and the compelling narrative of his recollections, they are largely myth.

We have discovered that his father was not just a deeply flawed individual but an abusive bigamist and an egomaniac, whose life was ruined not by racism or corruption but his own weaknesses. And, devastatingly, the testimony has come from Mr Obama's own relatives and family friends. …

Grandfather Obama sent his son to a missionary school but after completing his education, the youth could find little work except goatherding in his remote village of Nyangoma Kogela, in the roadless hills of Western Kenya.

At 18, he married a girl called Kezia. But Obama Snr was more interested in politics and economics than his family and his political leanings had been brought to the notice of leaders of the Kenyan Independence movement.

He was put forward for an American-sponsored scholarship in economics, with the idea being that he would eventually use his Western-honed skills in the new Kenya. At the age of 23 he headed for university in Hawaii, leaving behind the pregnant Kezia and their baby son.

Relatives say he was already a slick womaniser and, once in Honolulu, he promptly persuaded a fellow student called Ann - a naive 18-year-old white girl - to marry him. Barack Jnr was born in August, 1961.

Two years later, Obama Snr was on the move again. He was accepted at Harvard, and left his little boy and wife behind when he moved to the exclusive east coast university.

At the time, Ann explained to their son that his father had gone because his meagre stipend would not support the family if they lived together. But finance was the least of her worries.

Mr Obama Jnr claims that racism on both sides of the family destroyed the marriage between his mother and father.

In his book, he says that Ann's mother, who went by the nickname Tut, did not want a black son-in-law, and Obama Snr's father 'didn't want the Obama blood sullied by a white woman'.

In fact Ann divorced her husband after she discovered his bigamous double life. She remarried and moved to Indonesia with young Barack and her new husband, an oil company manager.

Obama Snr was forced to return to Kenya, where he fathered two more children by Kezia. He was eventually hired as a top civil servant in the fledgling government of Jomo Kenyatta - and married yet again.

Now prosperous with a flashy car and good salary, his third wife was an American-born teacher called Ruth, whom he had met at Harvard while still legally married to both Kezia and Ann, and who followed him to Africa. …


Unlike Updike's Col. Ellelou, however, who became a teetotaler when he joined the Black Muslims in Milwaukee, Obama Sr.'s alcoholism cost him his career and life.


Friends say drinking blighted his life - he lost both his legs while driving under the influence and also lost his job. However, this was no bar to his womanising: he sired a son, his eighth child, by yet another woman and continued to come home drunk. He was about to marry her when he finally died in yet another drunken crash when Obama was 21. …

In his book, he attempts to put the best face on it. His father, he writes, lost his civil service job after campaigning against corrupt African politicians who had 'taken the place of the white colonials'. One of Obama Snr's former drinking partners, Kenyan writer Philip Ochieng Ochieng says, however, that his friend's downfall was his weak character. …

Mr Obama claims that he, too, has been racially abused, even during his campaign for the White House. His mother, Ann, decided that he should get an American education and sent him back from Indonesia to Hawaii, where he was admitted to a £7,000-a-year prep school, Punahau Academy, and lived with his maternal grandparents. And while there, says Mr Obama, he was tortured by fellow pupils - who let out monkey hoots - and turned into a disenchanted teenage rebel, experimenting with cocaine and marijuana.

Even his grandparents were troubled by dark skin, he says in his book, recalling how once his grandmother complained about being pestered by a beggar. "You know why she's so scared?" he recalls his grandfather saying. "She told me the fella was black." Mr Obama says his soaring 'dream' of a better America grew out of his 'hurt and pain'.

Friends, however, remember his time at school rather differently. He was a spoiled high-achiever, they recall, who seemed as fond of his grandparents as they were of him. He affectionately signed a school photo of himself to them, using their pet names, Tut and Gramps. The caption says: "Thanks... for all the good times."


Updike will be amused to learn that while at prep school, the future Senator dressed like Updike's literary rival Tom Wolfe:


He worked on the school's literary magazine and wore a white suit, of the style popular with New York writers at the time.


The article confirms what I implied a few weeks ago: that the Presidential candidate was by upbringing a pretty typical upper middle class kid fantasizing a new identity for himself as an oppressed but rebellious African-American standing up to The Man.


One of his former classmates, Alan Lum, said: "Hawaii is such a melting pot that it didn't occur to me when we were growing up that he might have problems about being one of the few African-Americans at the school. Us kids didn't see colour. He was easy-going and well-liked."


Obama went on to tell us about how Columbia U. in Harlem in the early 1980s was practically Mississippi in 1937:


Mr Obama was later admitted to read politics and international relations at New York's prestigious Columbia University where, his book claims, "no matter how many times the administration tried to paint them over, the walls remained scratched with blunt correspondence (about) n*****s."


But one of his classmates, Joe Zwicker, 45, now a lawyer in Boston, said yesterday: "That surprises me. Columbia was a pretty tolerant place. There were African American students in my classes and I never saw any evidence of racism at all."


One of the reasons Sen. Obama strikes many people as refreshingly unlike a typical politicians is because he is unlike most of them. Instead, he more resembles a type of person we like a lot more than a politician -- a pop culture celebrity. Like, say, Madonna, he has devoted his life to reinventing himself, to evolving a persona that will excite the media and appeal to the white majority.

Obama has crafted himself into the New Improved Sidney Poitier, an updated version for 2007 of what Poitier represented to well-meaning whites in 1967. Not surprisingly, actual black Americans are more tepid in their response to Obama's image-honing.


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

Obammy was,as we are endlessly reminded,not only on the Harvard Review--NO! he was the president!Hmm,he must have overcome a lot of racism! I would like to read the story behind the story about his Harvard days!

Anonymous said...

The blacks will still vote for him in overwhelming numbers if he becomes the Dem presidential candidate (the f**king stupid blacks will vote for anyone who is a Democrat).

Obama is as liberal as Ted Kennedy, but he tries to paint himself as a middle-of-the-road type guy. I guess this will help him fool white voters in voting for him, but mark my words, if he becomes President, he will me the most socialist, left-leaning President in history.

Anonymous said...

Josh Randall, here is a glowing article on Obama's days at Harvard from the Boston Globe today:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/01/28/at_harvard_law_a_unifying_voice/?p1=MEWell_Pos1

Anonymous said...

Isn't the thisislondon site, the domain of the London only paper The Evening Standard? Granted, it's from the same Associated Newspaper stable as The Daily Mail, but it's a separate publication.

Anonymous said...

The New York Times also has an article on Obama's law school career today. It is complimentary, but not as over-the-top laudatory as the Globe article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/us/politics/28obama.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=todayspaper

The best part, unfortunately not available in the web version, is picture of a parody of Obama someone wrote at the time, purporting to have been written by Obama himself, in which he admits "It's true that my background is a bit convuluted.... I was born in Oslo, Norway, the son of a Volvo factory worker and part-time ice-fisherman. My mother was a backup singer for Abba....[In Chicago] I discovered I was black, and have remained so ever since. But I don't want to bore you folks with matters of background and ethnicity."

Anonymous said...

I wonder if there is any truth in this posting:

"...two of Obama's classmates in Indonesia at the time one who is now the CEO of Indonesia's national airline and the other a bank manager in Jakarta remember a very different Obama, a very religious 'Barry Soetoro', one that was well versed in Islam and liked to recite his prayers.

"Barry was previously quite religious in Islam. His birth father, Barack Hussein Obama was a Muslim economist from Kenya. Before marrying Ann Dunham, Hussein Obama was married to a woman from Kenya who had seven children. All the relatives of Barry's father were very devout Muslims"

"He was often in the prayer room wearing a 'sarong', at that time, he was quite religious in Islam but only after marrying Michelle, he changed his religion."

http://laotze.blogspot.com/2007/01/tracking-down-obama-in-indonesia-part-4.html

Anonymous said...

Barack's family history sounds like white presidents', but with less drug use.

No offense to my fellow Obama, but did he write those racial epithets on the walls himself? Or was that just proverbial "writing on the wall"?

Hawaii is known for being pretty racist against whites (Haoles) and other foreigners. I have no idea how a white-Kenyan guy would fit into that picture, but most likely he'd be perceived as rich and sort of white-like.

Barack's gag story about the Oslo fisherman is pretty funny. Nothing wrong with a sense of humor. And his dad was a religious guy from a poor background - since when is that bad? Atheism isn't very common in the developing world, except among Communists and the depraved.

Steve Sailer said...

Would Obama would be considered an apostate by Muslims? They really don't like people who convert away from Islam, but are they rigid about it if you were only a Muslim while you were a child gut then your mother took you out of an Islamic country? If you are a Muslim when you are 8, is that supposed to be for life, or are you allowed to become a Christian later?

Anyway, it's no reason to vote against (or for) Obama -- it's nobody else's business who we elect President -- but I would like to know if his "apostasy" is going to turn into a big international relations issue if he becomes President.

Anonymous said...

If he was born in Norway that he can't be president, so what's the truth?

Anonymous said...

Obama is just a prop to be used and discarded in time by Hillary. It´s just a matter of triangulation. Voters might not vote a woman in ofice, were it not a more outlandish possible candidate were offered (A Black(ish) man).
He could fill the vice-president token slot, though.
In 8 years, when the USA are less than 50 % white, he might have a chance.

Anonymous said...

Is Obama the entering wedge of an "Apocalypto"-type future?

With the dismantling of America's borders for entry by tens of millions of Third World types, the declining white demographics, the sinking average IQ level in key populations, the outsourcing of much of America's economy, and now a black as a serious candidate for President, as well as the deep anti-white racism seen not only in the street but also everywhere from the media to the Human Resources departments, I'm eyeing what happened to South Africa and even to Zimbaube and starting to think it's time to look for the exits.

"Brazil North" will not resemble Brazil proper. Once white America or its power and example is gone, the (slow?) descent to "Katrina nation" will be inevitable - and then on to "Apocalypto" redux in the New World? The movie "Idiocracy" (spiked by our elites) seems an optimistic scenario compared to this, doesn't it? What can we do to stop it?

Anonymous said...

First of all, a correction: I only skimmed the online article, and it does include an excerpt from the tongue-in-cheek* article in question. (They picked almost the same excerpts I did!)
Obama bin Laden is correct that three out of the last four presidents (Bush 41 being, as far as I know, an exception) have been the son of a drunk (Reagan), the stepson of a drunk (Clinton), or an ex-drunk himself (Bush 43). Obama's potential untruthfulness is the main issue.

* I hope anonymous 10:56 realized this.

Anonymous said...

I thought about this a little more, and realized that Barack's African father was not enlightened by American culture. If he were, he'd know that serial monogamy is far superior to bigamy, and that deadbeat divorcee fatherhood is the way to go.

Africans are probably the only culture Americans can sneer down at in the Family Values department. To everyone else in the world, it's the good old USA and Europe preaching the gospel of divorce, sex without strings, and feminism (defeminization).

Pretty soon the world will be like Scandinavia, where nobody bothers to get married (how quaint!) and single moms hold public office with no Baby Daddy in sight. Unless those Moooslims foil this enlightened vision with their evil notions of the sanctity of sex and belief in a power higher than money.

Anonymous said...

It's funny to see someone sign in as "anonymous" and then say, "mark my words".

:-)

Anonymous said...

Steve Sailer said...

Would Obama would be considered an apostate by Muslims? They really don't like people who convert away from Islam


An interesting theoretical question. It's worth pointing out that Barack Obama was never a Muslim, not even as a child.

Anonymous said...

I'm as tired of Obama-mania (a malady only members of the media appear vulnerable to) as the next person and I don't mind seeing his shining star tarnished (the phrase "Audacity of Hope" along makes me want to retch), but I found the article rather sleazy. His dad is dead and their connection seems to consist solely of genetics. Rather than dredging up embarrassing stories about his relations, it would be better if we learned some actual substance about this guy who is aiming for the presidency on nothing but surface.

Anonymous said...

tggp:

I have had the same reaction. Yes, he's a good looking, elloquent guy. Yes he's black. Yes he seems to be passably intelligent. But I still haven't heard him talking much about what policies he'd pursue as president. What is it that's supposed to make me vote for him over whatever dismal hack the other side nominates? Especially given how well electing a young guy with little relevant experience worked *this* time around.

There's a good reason Obama and Hillary are so excited to run this time. The Republicans have screwed things up so badly in Iraq (and they've done only a little better at home) that they're going to have a very ugly time getting reelected, and their rhetoric and their majority in both houses for most of the last 6 years makes it really hard to share blame with many Democrats. So almost anyone who gets the Democratic nomination might win, even if they'd get clobbered in a normal year.

Anonymous said...

Fuck this black ape who does he think he is.
America is white country. I tell when USA can have a pepercorned hair nigger for a prez when the whites in Africa that have been ethnically cleansed and murdered from every country in Africa have white prez.
Until that time fuck off you thieving little Bonobo ape.

Anonymous said...

As a white South African I think white Americans are insane to think of voting for a black, come look at what has happened to first world South Africa its a mess.
This mad coon will fuck your country up too.