Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Obama Sr. was also a great intellectual and scholar

Long-lost article by Obama's dad surfaces
Ben Smith, Jeffrey Ressner Tue Apr 15, 5:43 AM ET
. . . Now, a long-forgotten essay written 43 years ago by Obama’s father has surfaced, and its contents reveal much — not only about the senior Obama’s grasp of economic theory but also about the iconoclastic politics that, his son would later write, sent him into the spiral of career disappointment that concluded with his death in 1982 in his native Kenya.

. . . The article, with a loaded term in the title and a casual discussion of socialism, communism and nationalization, has raised the hackles of some anti-Obama conservatives who have been discussing it online.

Greg Ransom, a blogger who unearthed the journal at the University of California, Los Angeles, library, calls the article “the Rosebud” that provides the missing key to Obama’s memoir. Ransom wrote about the article’s contents recently in a posting with the provocative headline “Obama Hid His Father’s Socialist and Anti-Western Convictions From His Readers.”


So I went ahead and read the essay. It's extremely scholarly and way over my head. I choke on my check book and this guy is discussing economic systems.

But the interesting part of all this is the radical extremist right wing using it to somehow disparage Obama Jr. If I run for public office, will the fact that my father or mother never put pen to paper for anything beyond a grocery list or that my father was an abusive drunk be used to somehow guage where I stand on issues? WTF is wrong with these morons? How deranged can these extremists get? I believe we will find out as Mr. Obama takes center stage in the '08 election cycle.

2 comments:

John Guzlowski said...

You are dead right, Saga-billy.

My father was a pistol but that doesn't mean I'll shoot my mouth off.

SagaciousHillbilly said...

Maybe that's my problem. . . I'm always shooting my mouth off!