PrintMarch 7, 2010
What I Learned from Obama's Pop
"Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle!" - Alice in WonderlandA little more than a month ago, I began my first descent into the rabbit hole of Barack Obama's origins, a place known to swallow reputations whole. What prompted my inquiry was an e-mail from a correspondent asking my opinion of "Pop," a poem published under the 19-year-old Obama's name in the spring 1981 edition of Occidental College's literary magazine, Feast. Having no prior bias going in, here is what I have concluded coming out.Questioning Obama's origins is a legitimate enterprise. Even by their own humble standards, the major media -- including Obama's biographers -- have done an impressively slack job in tracing the president's uncertain roots.Obama was almost assuredly born in Hawaii. There is no evidence that puts him elsewhere. Undoing the Kenyan possibility is the high likelihood that the "marriage" between Barack Sr. and Ann Dunham was a sham.Much depends on...(Read Full Article)
