The new revelation that President Obama spent his teen years thoroughly baked is not really that new. As I wrote in VDARE.com in March 2007:
I particularly like how Obama rationalized his preppie drug use as "something that could push questions of who I was out of my mind . . ." His classmates, in contrast, in these articles seemed to find his explanation puzzlingly gratuitous. Many of them smoked dope on the beach, too, but they didn't need a racial identity crisis caused by the white power structure to justify their getting high. It was, like, Hawaii in the 1970s, you know? Maui Wowie, dude!
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/05/27/summer_book_list
ReplyDeleteIn Obama's sort-of defense, some people do smoke dope to escape from issues that are troubling them. I have a hard time relating to this: smoking dope always brought me closer to troubling thoughts, making me turn them over endlessly, which is why I don't smoke it anymore.
ReplyDeletePlease Mr Sailer: Obama's gravitas is not be questioned in this flippant manner. Try to remember: You are talking about the POTUS here.
ReplyDeletesmoke dope to escape from issues that are troubling them
Yes, OK. Everyone who's smoked (my hand is up) can relate. But, sorry, such arguments are also undercut by the fact that people who get high do it, at least in the beginning, because they enjoy it. A lot. And satisfying a serious case of the munchies is also fun.
That said, at one point in my life I decided it had evolved into a bad habit -- I was smoking too much, and for the wrong reasons -- more or less what you suggest. So one day I just quit, cold turkey, and never looked back.
I am Lugash.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8g3XXLTUpo
I am Lugash.
The white mans ice may not be colder, but his weed is definately better.
ReplyDeleteIsn't this recent spate of Choom Gang nostalgia an attempt, like the obsession over Obama's gay marriage presser, to score cool points with young voters?
ReplyDeleteThe Liberal narrative-makers want Obama to appear to be ultra hip and free spirited (whether he is or isn't). "Come join the Liberal club! Our guy smokes weed and loves the gays. We're way more fun than those stodgy Conservatives."
But is Obama ultra hip and free spirited? I get the feeling he's not. He seems mostly nerdish to me, and probably did suffer from the kind of crippling hyper-introspection he alludes to in that quote (hence, the ongoing bouts of mild depression). Fortunately for young Barry, despite his angst, he was good looking enough, a smooth talker, a decent athlete, and of greater intelligence than his complexion might suggest (always a boon). He had a lot of social smokescreens to hide his baggage behind.
I get the feeling he's not. He seems mostly nerdish to me, and probably did suffer from the kind of crippling hyper-introspection he alludes to in that quote (hence, the ongoing bouts of mild depression).
ReplyDeleteThe more I think about it, the more I'm liking my theory of marijuana-induced paranoid schizophrenia.
The guy had an alcoholic father and probably an alcoholic maternal grandfather*, so he almost certainly has the addiction gene.
And growing up in the 1970s, he would have been exposed to many more paranoia-inducing drugs than mere ETOH.
*If we ever learn the God's-honest truth about the real Barry Soetoro Dunham story, I think that we're going to learn that Stanley Armour was one helluva sicko...
I have to admit, the overlap of the last three presidents having a history of using drugs (two admitted, one widely alleged) and their uniform support for the war on drugs, incuding even federal raids on lega-in-the-state marijuana farms and shops, pegs my cynicism meter. Applying these laws to those men would have stopped their political careers before they started.
ReplyDeleteeah is right
ReplyDeletePlease Mr Sailer: Obama's gravitas is not be questioned in this flippant manner. Try to remember: You are talking about the POTUS here.
Tanya Dixon-Neely would go nuclear on your ass and she has plenty of time to do so now that she has been suspended from teaching.
But is Obama ultra hip and free spirited? I get the feeling he's not.
ReplyDeleteI agree. The fact that Obama's half-black prevents both liberals and consersatives alike from seeing that he is significantly more WASPish -- stiff, boring, and pedantic -- than George W.
Is Obama frankly addressing his cool "Kenyan-born" literary persona too, then?
ReplyDeleteWhat have I missed?
President Bush's purported drug use proved that he was a decadent, degenerate playboy.
ReplyDeletePresident Obama's drug use proves that he's hip and down with the boys.
You're very uncharitable in your interpretation. What I see is a young man without a father struggling with his identity.
ReplyDeleteThe difference is that I can empathize.
At a meta level it demonstrates that some people have an inbuilt desire/ability to manipulate others with their simple stories.
ReplyDeletePenn Jillette on Obama's meta-hyprocrisy on "The War on Drugs":
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWWOJGYZYpk
Maybe?! Maybe a little blow?!
"some people do smoke dope to escape from issues that are troubling them."
ReplyDeleteMyself. I can't be the only one who turned eagerly to dope just as it dawned on me what a complete hash I'd made of my college plans. Once you're on your way, it's a fine diversion. But it can derail a person just when he needs to be on top of his studies and taking the future very seriously.
Magically, Obama seemed to recover from it. I wonder how he did it. Amazing.
We can only imagine the tortures that he suffered due to his parentage.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you figure he ought to say?
This?:
"Oh, my dad was an African exchange student who was color-struck. He met my teenage freshman mom who was a virgin, but also had a bad case of jungle fever. Yeah, she always did have a thing for dark meat."
"Anyway, he knocked her up with me and married her a few days before he skipped town to go to Harvard. He never came back, of course. As an African, women were disposable to him."
"He hooked up with some other white woman at Harvard, knocked her up and took her back to Africa when Harvard got a bit too hot for him."
"Apparently Harvard caught on with his skirt-chasing and other wives and figured he was going to be a major embarassment Real Soon Now."
"Anyway he's dead now: got sh!tfaced drunk and crashed a car. Good thing he left, though. I could have been stuck in Africa being raised by a wife-beater."
I imagine I might have taken to drink and dope, too.
What a sad, pathetic life Barry led.
"But is Obama ultra hip and free spirited? I get the feeling he's not."
ReplyDeleteThere is no such thing as "ultra hip" (or "hip"), not as those who wish to be so perceive it anyway. "Hipness" is an affectation.
"Free-spirited"? It doesn't seem one who would tie himself to the tightly scripted and scheduled world of a Presidential candidate, then a President, could be much of a "free-spirit."
I know I'm dating myself but I can't read these stories without hazily reminiscing back to an iSteve post about the rambling Section 8 woman (the ex-baker who drove the minivan with the novelty pink eyelashes on the hood). In the newspaper story she proclaimed, "Hawaii's not all it's cracked up to be if you're black!"
ReplyDeleteAnyway that is the single bit I remember from the story, but it seems likely the islands have grown substantially more inhospitable and pricey to non-SWPL non-trustfunded unskilled folks than back in the Magnum PI era.
"Most of you probably know it by its ancient Dutch name"
ReplyDeleteDespite the polls I have a sinking feeling that Romney (unlike his thoroughly modern metrosexual opponent) is too much redolent of a bygone America, in personal habits if not necessarily ideology, to get across the election finish line; about the 1 thing he has in common w/ the new breed is dodging the draft. Obama is POTUS because of being in tune with the zeitgeist and this edge shouldn't be underlooked.
ReplyDeletehttp://youtu.be/TmhZx_miT3Y
ReplyDeleteSpain, the Nevada/Florida/California of Europe.
Is there ANYTHING Obama has ever done, independent of his "struggle" to find his racial identity? I think it even influences his choice of what he puts on a cheeseburger.
ReplyDelete“And as we bid a fond farewell to our island paradise, remember to watch the hands, they tell a story. Every movement has a meaning.”
ReplyDeleteOr, as we use to say in the sixties, “every meaning has a movement.”
I watched this movie a few nights ago. While I'm not steeped in Birther lore, the theory that the real question is not WHERE Obama was born, but WHO his real father is, made a lot more sense to me.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jrrnkKmUzo
Watch the trailer and compare the pictures of young Frank Marshall Davis and young Barack Obama Sr. Then tell me who you think President Obama resembles more.
Even if you don't buy into the Davis-as-father theory, the movie also gives an excellent chronology of Obama's radical youth, and how the radical left has infiltrated positions of power in the US.
http://www.salon.com/2012/05/26/obama_faces_armageddon/
ReplyDeleteI don't believe anything I hear about Obama's life these days. None of it sounds real.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to have known a guy from Maui in the '70's who did not smoke dope. Star running back at Punahou. Didn't really like him, but at least he went his own way.
ReplyDeletePresident Bush's purported drug use proved that he was a decadent, degenerate playboy.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, Bush did harder drugs. Zero may have done coke as well, but if so I don't think anyone has confirmed it.
Speaking of high school, don't you think we should try to get this judge fired?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2150123/Exhausted-honour-student-shown-mercy-jailed-truancy--Works-jobs-support-family.html
Didn't Obama write in "Dreams" that he used cocaine? Can't recall clearly but I *think* he made those claims.
ReplyDeleteWhy did my water-sports post get censored?
ReplyDeleteWeird.
I remember that story, Hawai'i Hi-Lo. The nice woman from Hawaii and her bastard, who also had a bastard were given a Mcmansion in Charlotte. The Washington Post thought it would be a touching story of deserving black folks getting a leg up from the Feds. The normally ultra-liberal Post comment section went ballistic on the poor lady and her daughter.
ReplyDeleteWhy did my water-sports post get censored?
ReplyDeleteI have no idea, but I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say, thank God for it.
What I see is a young man without a father struggling with his identity.
What I see is a kid smoking a joint.
What, he's the only one in the world who's got issues? Oh, right, his are just ten times more important because of his dad.
Writing that I realize, what the boy's had all this time are mommie issues. It's always important to remember Freud wasn't completely full of shit.
When you think about it, Obama just made it through the novelty-window with his biracial uniter schtick. His demo--spawn of single white mom, absent black dad--is suddenly common.
http://youtu.be/eTUJnmRNzj0
ReplyDeleteSteve, you need to link to this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.news.com.au/world/london-woman-jailed-for-youtube-race-rant/story-e6frfkyi-1226373280267
Note the Sikh thinks that she should have been jailed for longer (!) than 21 weeks. She's lost her job over it.
What happened to sticks and stones?
Steve, he had actually meant to write an additional chapter for "Dreams" about how his experiences with multiracial hotboxing occasioned new Gandhi-like reflections upon Kill Haole Day & other subjects--but then he got high
ReplyDeleteYeah, Hawaii is a really weird place to be if you're poor and not from here. Doubly so if you're black.
ReplyDeleteMost blacks in Hawaii hate being "on the rock" with a passion, though that may be a function of most of them being military, and there not really being any black culture here. The hip hop clubs are mostly Asian hang outs and it reflects an Asian take on that whole culture (Souped up Hondas, rice bikes and focus on "team" dancing, racing and suchlike).
Those that do get on here are usually self-starting business and sales types who start resturants or lower end retail establishments. That or straight from the Caribbean Rastas here for the weed and reggae scene. One thing I've never seen is a buppie like Obama here. They just avoid this place. I don't know why.
It might be because while we're English speaking and part of the states, there's an implicit indirect Asianess to most social situations here from high on to low which is probably unnerving.
The drift of Mary Jane culture has been veering white for several decades now. The most common theme one sees is a sort of veneration of easygoing stupidity but the black constructions remain sentimentally attached to cannabis consumption as a sign of authenticity. When I saw "Friday" I was right in its target demo and considered it easily the lamest, least funny comedy/film ever, stoner genre or not (it really does make the Harold & Kumar series look like Moliere). So naturally it was quite profitable and spawned sequels... A few subsequent "black" stoner movies followed the template of casting thuggish hip-hop celebrities as leads ("How High"; "The Wash"; arguably "Soul Plane"). "Half Baked" would be the obvious counter-example except for playing heavily on cliches of racially divergent behavior. However the social image of Rastafarians one encounters today is a quite pale shade of its former self. You're not spoiled for choice when trying to imagine a contemporary show whiter than "Weeds" (apart from that other new cable dramedy I'm always hearing about)
ReplyDeleteI have no idea, but I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say, thank God for it.
ReplyDeleteIf you grew up in Hawaii, would not your entire childhood have been spent swimming and surfing and snorkling and scuba diving and surf-fishing and spear-fishing and deep-sea fishing and sailing and speed-boating etc etc etc?
Why then would your life's passion be to head off to middle-of-the-continent Chicago, Illinois, in order to rabble-rouse about asbestos removal in public housing complexes?
Most blacks in Hawaii hate being "on the rock" with a passion
As I hinted above, I think it's because THEY CAN'T SWIM.
Not even the ones with crazy-anthropologist jungle-fever single-white-moms.
Hell, do we even have any known vignettes [written by Bill Ayers or otherwise] about Barry walking along the seashore looking for seashells?
It's as though the entire Pacific Ocean doesn't even exist in the dude's greater hagiography.
Veryimportantpotheads.com
ReplyDeleteJust where are the convincing observations of Barry Obama during
ReplyDeletehis high high school years attesting to any sense that he was wrestling deeply with RACIAL issues? That he may have been tossling internally with HOMOSEXUAL issues appears to have been suspected? The President just dissembles like a big league psychopath.
To be fair, Bush did harder drugs. Zero may have done coke as well, but if so I don't think anyone has confirmed it.
ReplyDeleteActually it's the opposite. There is no credible evidence that Bush did cocaine, only unknown anonymous "witnesses". On the other hand, Obama admitted doing coke in his own biography. Back in 2008 some McCain campaign official suggested that the media go find and interview Obama's drug dealer. Wouldn't that be a scoop?
Barry's like the narcissistic serial-killer in American Psycho who defends one of his lesser sins with the plaint: "hey, give me a break, I'm a child of divorce!"
ReplyDeleteImagine all the other common and petty vices to which Obama could apply the universal solvent that is his conveniently absent cad of a father:
"sure, in early adolescence I was masturbating like an out-of-control monkey so much my grandparents considered counseling, but self-abuse was something that could put questions of who I was out of my mind"
I've been to Hawaii plenty of times. I saw almost no blacks, except for the obvious tourists wandering Waikiki and Lahaina. It is diverse in the sense of plenty of Asians, white-Asian mixes, and diluted native Hawaiians. Plus, I got the feeling that no one much care about your ethnicity.
ReplyDelete"As I hinted above, I think it's because THEY CAN'T SWIM."
ReplyDeleteGenius, pure genius. How could this have been missed in Half Blood Prince. Anyone who lives in a beach community can attest that it is IMPOSSIBLE to be COOL and unable to swim. He probably had to smoke weed to avoid being a total outcast - at least he was doing something coolish.
He left Hawaii. He left California, where water is cool too. New York and Chicago are better places to hide this little inadequacy. Mixed race, clean, articulate and radical are enough to be considered the vaunted COOL.
Why then would your life's passion be to head off to middle-of-the-continent Chicago, Illinois, in order to rabble-rouse about asbestos removal in public housing complexes?
ReplyDeletebecause in Hawaii
no one much care[d] about your ethnicity
I've always wondered why Obama isn't challenged on this: he's from relatively multiracial Hawaii but he's never said "I've lived in a diverse community, and seen how it works".
And I've never been there, but Hawaii seems to be making it work.
Granted, without black folk. And we're back to why Barry left, and maybe why he doesn't want to talk about it.
I tire of people praising his literary gifts for the same reason: whatever else, this is a man who deliberately shuns or is incapable of insight that detracts from his personal ambition.
Stupidity, pure stupidity: Here are a half dozen pictures of Obama bodysurfing in Hawaii during the 2008 campaign:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/14/obama-bodysurfs-in-hawaii_n_119070.html
I never heard that he board surfs, but he body surfs.
Here are a half dozen pictures of Obama bodysurfing in Hawaii during the 2008 campaign
ReplyDeleteSteve, here on the East Coast, black folk "body surf" in the shallow water, and then the rip tide catches them, drags them out to sea, and they drown.
Happens all the dadgum time.
Google michael jordan friend drowned.
You know, during the Bush 41 presidency, GHWB practically lived on that speedboat up in Kennebunkport - everyone who visited [foreign leaders, congressmen & senators, members of the press] were practically REQUIRED to spend the afternoon on the water with him.
But when have we ever seen any sign whatsoever that Barry likes to be near the H2O?
It's just bizarre [frankly incomprehensible] that the guy could have grown up on the beach yet have no tales of e.g. surf-fishing and "the one that got away" [or the one that didn't].
It's completely at odds with every single "beach childhood" that I'm personally familar with [and I must know tens of people - maybe even one hundred or more - who grew up near the water].
Have we ever even heard Barry talk about building a bonfire on the beach?
"It might be because while we're English speaking and part of the states, there's an implicit indirect Asianess to most social situations here from high on to low which is probably unnerving."
ReplyDeleteI don't know about that. Though there is a high percentage of ethnic-Asians in Hawaii, most of them are 2nd + generation and the vibe in the bigger towns is basically coastal southern CA, just with more Asian faces.
There is a tremendous homeless problem in Waikiki (hell, if I ever become homeless I would move there), and from I can see all of the habitues are non-Hispanic white.
"Steve, here on the East Coast, black folk "body surf" in the shallow water, and then the rip tide catches them, drags them out to sea, and they drown."
ReplyDeleteI've been there. I can't swim, but I've rode plenty a wave body surfing; I'd go out up to my neck hoping I could will myself to do it or die trying. I had a lot of close calls.
Swimming is way cool and everyone in the country club, beach club, golf club circuit is expected to know how. I worked for people in that group and they were very insular - one of them didn't know where the largest public park in the county was - 10 miles away!
I had a friend who worked at the beach club. I worked construction, at a very (illegally) young age, for many of the members. I mentioned one of the member's kids to my friend, he said, "he's such a fag, he doesn't even know how to swim.". I remember sympathizing with him, and feeling bad that he couldn't escape his world; at least i could go out on the street and play baseball or stickball, he was stuck with a nanny who carted him from the hunt club to the beach club. I still keep my secret to this day, but that kid, an only child, got into drugs and either killed himself or OD''d.
Swimming is cool, if BO could really do it, his handlers would make a big deal of it, it is really popular among the elites who so love him. If he could really do it, he would be inspiring young black kids to do it (don't tell me he doesn't know that most can't). Come to think of it, how many people smoke around the pool and how many swimmers do you know who smoke?
Steve, you're a white guy from California, can you swim? If you can't, I'm sure that is one of the most embarrassing, humiliating questions you're ever asked. In beach communities, it is like being illiterate.
I recall a cover photo of him in a bathing suit as he walked in ocean water ankle high. It was in People or some such check out stand mag. I recall laughing because they wrote copy that spoke of his great pecs and sexy bod, and I thought, "Pecs! Pecs? He's skinny and in his early forties he already has sag in what they ludicrously call "pecs."
ReplyDeleteI mean he didn't have an ugly body, but there was nothing there which the ave. woman was seeing that would have elicited a "ummm" or "hot" or "wow" yet the writer was confusing him with Mr. Atlas.
Anonymous:
ReplyDeleteUh, us Hawaiians ain't exactly known for having easily floatable bodies (at least before the advent of plate lunches and spam musubis). You just learn how to swim young, otherwise you'll be a huge outcast or dead around the age of six. If you can't float easily (like myself), you learn how to tread water or doggie paddle really quick. Even the densest body can tread water. If anything a dense body gives you an advantage in free diving. The quicker and less energy you expend going 10-15 feet down, the more time and energy you have to spear or collect something before having to swim up for air.
Far more important than ethnicity in Hawaii is class (though ethnicity corresponds to class to a certain extent). If you don't make it into one of the good prep schools here, you're pretty much doomed to lower class, lower-middle class status. I shamed my family big time when I bombed out of Kamehameha (I failed P.E. three times, what can you expect when they grade on a curve and Brian Ching is in your class?)
There is some ethnic tension, usually among the lower classes. Hawaiians and Samoans got along pretty horribly until the Micronesians started coming in, and everyone dislikes them except the SWPL whites in the state bureaucracy who assuage their Bikini atoll guilt by dumping them enmasse in poor Hawaiian neighborhoods and housing projects.
As for the homeless problem, we lack two things that keeps the population down on the mainland: Winter and violent ghettos. Even Kalihi-Palama and Chinatown is pretty safe after dark. Burglaries and car break-ins are pretty widespread, though.
Maybe Genius was an overstatement, but it is certainly plausible. It also helps to explain why he really didn't date many white girls in his social circle, white college girls are certainly more likely to be in the Water, or Regatta, Class - you can't fake swimming when it comes to taking a dip off the back of Daddy's boat. BTW His body is nothing to be ashamed of; I work with many 20 something guys with paunches and stretch marks.
ReplyDeleteSwimming is cool, if BO could really do it, his handlers would make a big deal of it, it is really popular among the elites who so love him. If he could really do it, he would be inspiring young black kids to do it (don't tell me he doesn't know that most can't). Come to think of it, how many people smoke around the pool and how many swimmers do you know who smoke?
ReplyDeleteSteve, you're a white guy from California, can you swim? If you can't, I'm sure that is one of the most embarrassing, humiliating questions you're ever asked. In beach communities, it is like being illiterate.
THIS.
I think you've hit the nail on the head.
[BTW, we'll know that Axelrod is monitoring this blog when we finally get some footage of Barry actually swimming...]
Why did my water-sports post get censored?
ReplyDeleteFor the same reason my facial post got deleted? ;-)
Don't be an idiot. Here's video of Obama bodysurfing in Hawaii:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.surfline.com/video/locals/youtube-obama-bodysurfs-sandy-beach_17733
"stupidity" "idiot". I object. Tunnel visioned tenacious moron, maybe. I will push this issue as far as your whim will indulge.
ReplyDeleteThe best evidence I have that Obama can swim is the account of an Indonesian who said kids used to throw him in the water and he would have drowned if he couldn't swim. I think that was in Half Blood Prince, or maybe on the blog.
Otherwise any media images or videos that I've seen are captioned body surfing, why not swimming? That sounds like cautious PR language.
I don't see any proof that he is in deep water. The images are pretty tightly focused. Most non-swimmers are not rabid hydrophobics, we are afraid of deep water.
Take it from an expert, closeted, non-swimmer, the shoreline is the ONLY safe place you can get away with pretending to swim.
I haven't seen it anywhere that he lists a hobby as swimming. I didn't check his official website - they want my email address - No Way. Somebody braver, please check it out. Hurry up, Seal Team 6 is probably giving him intensive lessons as we speak.
That's it. My final comment ever on this blog, on this issue.
Why did my water-sports post get censored?
ReplyDeleteFor the same reason my facial post got deleted? ;-)
You guys, at least Lucius should consider a career in posting. (Lucius, that is you, right?)
mypostingcareer.com, boy-eee