Late one night about a year ago, I received a call from the mysterious Charles Johnson. Mother Jones calls Johnson, “Twitter’s most infamous right-wing troll.” Whatever. Johnson knows stuff, much of it true.
He asked me whether I had read David Garrow’s massive 2017 Obama biography, “Rising Star.” When I said I had, he asked whether I had read the paperback version. I had not. He pointed me to a particular page and told me to go get the paperback…
On page 113, I found the excerpt not included in the original version of “Rising Star.” It came from a letter Obama wrote to his college girlfriend, Alex McNear…
Given its content, I could see why the excerpt was left out. Wanting to know who made the decision to do so, I emailed Garrow.
Garrow wrote back promptly, telling me it was McNear who refused to share the lines in question. She told him they were “too explosive,” adding, “They involved gayness.”
A dogged researcher, Garrow followed the unredacted letters to Emory University where they ended up after McNear sold them.
Garrow had a friend go to the library, find the redacted lines, and copy them down by hand. Garrow then inserted this new language into the paperback that came out in May 2018.
Obama, then about 21, had written to McNear that he viewed gay sex as “an attempt to remove oneself from the present, a refusal perhaps to perpetuate the endless farce of earthly life.”
Then came the money quote: “You see, I make love to men daily, but in the imagination. My mind is androgynous to a great extent and I hope to make it more so.”
At the time, Obama was in New York, writing back to McNear who was still in Los Angeles. These sentiments may explain why Obama inexplicably froze McNear out of his life. Garrow describes the letters Obama sent to McNear as “hostile,” even “ugly.”
Dipping into his thesaurus, Obama wrote on one occasion, “You are correct when you say that initially you were to me nothing more than a lovely wraith I had shaped to fit my needs.” And on another, “I no longer feel compelled to try to shackle you in my abstruse dreams.” Shackle?
This revelation came at a good time for me. In writing my book “Unmasking Obama,” I was still debating whether or not I should address the rumors of Obama’s homosexuality.
There was other evidence to consider. One was Obama’s adolescent relationship with CPUSA member Frank Marshall Davis, an admitted bisexual with a taste for underage prey.
Obama wrote one poem about Davis while in college, “Pop,” and likely an earlier one while in high school. Davis appears to have written one about Obama.
“Pop takes another shot, neat / Points out the same amber / Stain on his shorts that I’ve got on mine / and / Makes me smell his smell, coming / From me,” Obama wrote as a 19-year-old.
What young man writes something like that? Well, the same young man who wrote, “I make love to men daily.”
Then too there was the memorable Larry Sinclair. In June 2008, at the National Press Club in Washington, Sinclair related the alleged details of a two-day coke and sex romp with the then-married Obama in 1999.
Sinclair provided dates, the name of the hotel, the name of the Muslim limo driver who arranged the assignation, the specifics of their sexual interlude, and challenged the media to follow up. They did not. Instead, as was their habit during the Obama years, they attacked the messenger.
… In his email, Garrow related how the media ignored the bombshell in his paperback, writing, “Even the Daily Caller, which I’m 98% certain knew of the change, didn’t do anything with it.”
