"*And as everyone with cable now knows,* Wright has given a bunch of fiery sermons, in which he blasted America's foreign policy and racism, and said Hillary Clinton has never been called the n-word."

Why is it that one has to watch cable TV to obtain this information?

And why is it that one has to read English newspapers or wacko web sites online to find any discussion of Obama's father? (For an example of the former see here: <link>. ) The NYT just ran a piece on Obama's mother, and Roger Cohen has a column today on Obama's brother. But nothing at all about his father.

This isn't just idle gossip. Voters who care even one iota about the character of the candidate for whom they contemplate voting have a right and duty to know about the candidate's family background. XX Factor has been going on and on about what Spitzergate and the Monica Lewinsky affair say about Eliot Spitzer and Bill Clinton, so that you kinda get the impression they wouldn't relish electing yet another exploitive, misogynist, narcissistic creep into office. Many Obama supporters have even taken the position that he is the "true feminist candidate."

But Obama's father -- for whom Obama expressed only praise and gratitude in his books -- has repeatedly abandoned wives and young children. Barack Obama Pere fathered 8 children with 4 different wives. He was reportedly still married to his first wife when he married the second (Obama's mother), and still married to both of them when he married the third.

We've seen the "raised-by-a-single-mother-aft­­er-a-louse-of-a-father-abando­ns-­the-family" scenario played out before with Bill Clinton, and it doesn't take a belief in Freudian dogma to posit that Young Bill's experiences led to his toxic adult combo of making himself extremely charming to women, creating a surface appearance of being their friend and political ally, and exploiting the most powerless of them he could find behind closed doors.

Obama's already showing us the first two parts of that toxic brew. He's frequently described as a "rock star" and "inspirational speaker" who "casts a spell" over his listeners. We all know that where there are rock stars, there usually are groupies, and, indeed, "Obama Girl" has already made a puling video about him. Hasn't it occurred to any other voters out there -- particularly female voters and women's rights advocates of both genders -- that Obama might be an even more extreme version of Bill Clinton when it comes to women? Didn't anyone else's mama teach them to beware of charmers and smooth talkers?

Isn't even possible, looking at the history of his behavior, that Obama's father would've scored very high on the revised Psychopathology Check List (PCL-IV)? The vast majority of psychopaths aren't criminals, after all. They're just supremely selfish, self-centered SOBs or DOBs who use people until they've used them up and then move on. Kinda sounds like the story of Obama Dad's life. And researchers are in agreement that psychopathy is caused by a combination of environment and genes. Is it possible that Obama -- famous for his charm, eloquence and thinking on his feet -- would rate a high score on the Psychopathology Check List himself?

Maybe yes, maybe no, but don't the voters have as much a right to know the facts concerning Obama's father, so they can explore the issue for themselves? Don't they have at least as much of a right as to they do Hillary Clinton's tax returns or the results of John McCain's physical exam? Why do the media feel they can appoint themselves the arbiter of what topics are "in good taste"?

As a voter, I've always given far more weight to the "issues" than to "character." But in this primary race, except perhaps for healthcare, Clinton and Obama are pretty close on the issues. For that reason, character has loomed much larger for me in this primary battle. It makes me extremely uncomfortable with Obama that the media has been treating him with kid gloves to the extent of engaging in wholesale censorship.

OK, you draw unpleasant conclusions about Obama's character because his father was a lowlife and Obama himself is charming and appealing to women. What conclusions do you draw about Hillary's character, given that she has allowed herself to be repeatedly and publicly humiliated by her husband's many infidelities?

dig that "allowed" as if she had a choice. Please Obama-fan, do 2 wrongs make a right? Thanks for 'keeping it positive'. or at least pretending.

And you miss my point. Last I checked you can't inherit traits from your husband.

Good point re "allowed." Pretending to be above politics, and taking the moral high ground, is exactly what Obama and his supporters are all about.

What does this say about Hillary's character, that she tolerates this sort of behavior on the part of Bill?

It says she cares more about political success than her pride or personal happiness. It says her marriage to Bill had probably by then become a political expedient and no more. So what?

Perhaps the people who would've held it against her had she divorced the bum were Red-staters who wouldn't have voted for her anyway. But at the time her political advisers and the polls were probably telling her it would be political suicide to stand up for herself. This was an electorate that actually gave her CREDIT for talking about baking cookies, remember.

I don't expect the politicians I vote for to be above politics. I just want them (1) to vote the "right" way (i.e., my way) on the issues that are most important to me, and (2) have enough character not to inflict devastating harm on the political causes they and I are advocating for. I've found that (2) is sometimes a tall order.

Last time I heard, it's really hard to learn habits from someone you saw once, for a month at Christmas, after you were two. Maybe it'd be more instructive to do some character studies on his grandfather who helped rear him, even though he didn't really approve of the marriage, who learned to live with a wife who out-earned him in a time when that was thought to be emasculating, who reared a biracial child in a segregated society, and who never let the boy be without a decent, hard-working male role-model. Maybe THAT guy deserves some study and some credit.

Why do you care about Obama's father? I mean, really, who cares who or what his father was? Nobody, that's who.

And Rev. Wright was correct when he said that nobody ever called Hillary a nigger. they haven't. I simply do not get why ever one is so touchy about what this guy says, especially since most of it, on closer examination, turns out to be true.

Did we react out of proportion to the deaths on 9/11 when placed in perspective with what our country has done? Of course we did. Apparently each dead American is the equivalent of 100 or so dead foreigners (unless they are white foreigners and we ourselves didn't kill them, then we'll handwring for a day or two and pretend to really care).

What if he found out tomorrow that hillary Clinton's father had raped a girl when he was a teenager? Would it really change the way you view her? My father has been in and out of jail throughout my life yet it really isn't a reflection on me or my siblings. It doesn't make us bad.

My guess is that all of this Wright business and Obama's father business are just ways of attacking a man you don't support; manufactured controversy, much like much of the manufactured outrage that our news media and political parties spin on a daily basis.

There's still an impact that stems from the knowledge that this person is, and then was, your parent; from having a parent treat you and your family this way; and (with particular regard to the child's stand on women's issues and relationships with women) watching your father treat your mother and other women this way.

Even on the "environment" side of the genes/environment combo, it's not just a matter of "habits" or "rearing." It's also a matter of identification, role modeling, trauma and self-esteem.

And then, as I noted in an earlier post, there's also a genetic component in character traits such as narcissism and psychopathology.

In any event, my main point was this: Why aren't the mainstream media having the debate that we're having right now? Why is the story of Obama's father censored, when we get the full spectrum of personal background stories about Clinton and McCain, and when we get NYT pieces about Obama's mother and brother?

If we really don't care about who Obama's father was -- if parents are really just irrelevant -- then why did The NYT run a profile on Obama's mother last week? Why does Roger Cohen have a column this week on pretty much everyone in Obama's extended family EXCEPT his father? Why does The Times today have an article on Obama's schooling that contains only a glancing reference to Obama's father, when it mentions that, while Obama "has several half siblings from his father’s other marriages," he's closest to his half-sister from his mother's second marriage?

Doesn't it bother you even a little bit when our supposedly free press, the supposed "watchdog" of the political process is engaged in self-censorship? Isn't this exactly what the press -- and most spectacularly The NYT -- did in the early stages of the Iraq war?

@ "My father has been in and out of jail throughout my life yet it really isn't a reflection on me or my siblings. It doesn't make us bad."

Of course not. But if you were running for President, or any elected office, you know it would be an issue.

As for your hypothetical about Hillary Clinton's father "rap[ing] a girl when he was a teenager," first of all, why such an odd hypothetical? One incident, and you specify that it happened when the man "was a teenager"? It isn't at all equivalent to the sitch with Obama's father, in which the man engaged in a lifelong pattern of seducing and abandoning women and irresponsibility toward the children he brought into the world(along with a number of other forms of selfish and self-indulgent behavior that aren't relevant to our "women's issues" topic right now, like alcoholism and reckless driving).

In any event, if Hillary's dad raped a girl when he was a teenager (or whenever), you can bet that it would be a topic of coverage. I'm sure plenty of people would be saying this would explain why she's so "shrill" and "strident," and that it meant she was "too unstable" to be President.

The biggest problem is that the Republicans will NOT continue the censorship practiced by the media right now.

Mitt Romney was brought down in part by the whispering campaign about his great-grandfather (or whatever distant ancestor it was) being a polygamist. What do you think they're going to do with the fact that Obama's own father had multiple wives? I'm not sure at this point whether it's fair to call Dad a "polygamist" (i.e., someone who had simultaneous wives deliberately, according to a religious belief or cultural practice, as opposed to someone who just too lame to bother with divorce), because -- thanks to the media blackout -- I haven't yet been able to find a reliable media source to confirm the use of the term in The (English) Daily Mail. But you can be sure that the Swift Boat crowd will have no such semantic scruples.

Don't you think it would be smart for the Democrats to "draw the teeth" on the polygamy issue now, and deal with it in a reasoned, non-hysterical way, rather than leave it to Karl Rove and the religious right?

Why isn't the media touching this? LMAO

swagman wrote:

"And Rev. Wright was correct when he said that nobody ever called Hillary a nigger. they haven't. I simply do not get why ever one is so touchy about what this guy says, especially since most of it, on closer examination, turns out to be true."

She hasn't been called a n***** because she's not black. She HAS been called a c***, a b**** and numerous other epithets that are only used as hate speech against women, on THIS FORUM and many others. Suggesting the African Americans are the only group of people to be the subject of vile epithets is pure bull.

jlapro:

She hasn't been called a n***** because she's not black. She HAS been called a c***, a b**** and numerous other epithets that are only used as hate speech against women, on THIS FORUM and many others. Suggesting the African Americans are the only group of people to be the subject of vile epithets is pure bull.

Don't you see? You are playing exactly the same game. Shall we turn this into a yet another contest as to which candidate is the biggest victim or should we accept Obama's denouncement and rejection of Rev. Wright and move on?