Saturday, November 01, 2008
What's with Steve?
I'm puzzled by Steve Sailer's insistence that Obama could not be the son of Frank Marshall Davis. Sailer says that Barack Jr must be the son of Barack Sr, because Jr "looks East African", and because Sr was surely the only African visitor in Honolulu at that time. Well, maybe he looks East African, but he doesn't look anything like Sr. He does look a lot like Davis, and has the poetic and rhetorical talents of Davis. By most accounts, Sr was not especially talented; he appears to have been a dissipated alcoholic son of aristocracy.
One of the commenters on Sailer's blog quotes Davis's autobiography at length, including some contemptuous comments about African students visiting Honolulu at that time, disproving that part of Sailer's assumption.
As I pointed out before, the American Communists of that generation were strongly pro-family, even more than the average Americans at that time. The anti-family bias that we associate with modern Leftists is not part of Marxism, and certainly not part of the Soviet version of Communism. Russians were, and still are, intensely familial, intensely protective of their children, and intensely opposed to homosexuality. This anti-family crap was strictly for export, and didn't really hit until the late '60s. It has devastated the black community ... which would benefit from a return of Davis-era Marxism.
Davis was solidly married. If he was tomcatting around, it would have been carefully hidden, as with any other important man in that generation. Assigning the 'love-child' to an African visitor would have been a normal move.
So there are many facts, both genetic and cultural, on the side of Davis and very little on the side of Barack Sr. Methinks Sailer has become enamored of his own theory, which is natural but not good scientific thinking.
Semi-relevant sidenote: Looking at Davis's brief bio, I see that he was a Kansan, born in Ark City and educated at K-State in the 1920's. K-State was founded by Abolitionists and has always been proudly integrated, graduating black writers and poets as far back as the 1880's.
If Davis is the papa, it would make Obama unquestionably a natural-born citizen, and Kansan on both sides.
Of course the whole question is merely academic. If the Constitution were still in effect, this would be genuinely important, because we would need to check the qualifications of candidates before even considering them at the party level. Since the Constitution has been unread and unused for many decades, it doesn't matter. ¶ 3:24 PM
I'm puzzled by Steve Sailer's insistence that Obama could not be the son of Frank Marshall Davis. Sailer says that Barack Jr must be the son of Barack Sr, because Jr "looks East African", and because Sr was surely the only African visitor in Honolulu at that time. Well, maybe he looks East African, but he doesn't look anything like Sr. He does look a lot like Davis, and has the poetic and rhetorical talents of Davis. By most accounts, Sr was not especially talented; he appears to have been a dissipated alcoholic son of aristocracy.
One of the commenters on Sailer's blog quotes Davis's autobiography at length, including some contemptuous comments about African students visiting Honolulu at that time, disproving that part of Sailer's assumption.
As I pointed out before, the American Communists of that generation were strongly pro-family, even more than the average Americans at that time. The anti-family bias that we associate with modern Leftists is not part of Marxism, and certainly not part of the Soviet version of Communism. Russians were, and still are, intensely familial, intensely protective of their children, and intensely opposed to homosexuality. This anti-family crap was strictly for export, and didn't really hit until the late '60s. It has devastated the black community ... which would benefit from a return of Davis-era Marxism.
Davis was solidly married. If he was tomcatting around, it would have been carefully hidden, as with any other important man in that generation. Assigning the 'love-child' to an African visitor would have been a normal move.
So there are many facts, both genetic and cultural, on the side of Davis and very little on the side of Barack Sr. Methinks Sailer has become enamored of his own theory, which is natural but not good scientific thinking.
Semi-relevant sidenote: Looking at Davis's brief bio, I see that he was a Kansan, born in Ark City and educated at K-State in the 1920's. K-State was founded by Abolitionists and has always been proudly integrated, graduating black writers and poets as far back as the 1880's.
If Davis is the papa, it would make Obama unquestionably a natural-born citizen, and Kansan on both sides.
Of course the whole question is merely academic. If the Constitution were still in effect, this would be genuinely important, because we would need to check the qualifications of candidates before even considering them at the party level. Since the Constitution has been unread and unused for many decades, it doesn't matter. ¶ 3:24 PM
