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David Maraniss and Obama's Communist Mentor
American Thinker
Paul Kengor
7/9/2012
Excerpt:
"It's interesting that not only does Barack Obama need continued vetting, but so do his biographers. The culprit is the same: the liberal bias that dutifully protects Obama like white knights guarding the king's castle, shamelessly tossing journalistic objectivity right out the window. As Sean Hannity likes to say, when it comes to Obama's background, it has fallen to us conservatives to do the job that the mainstream "Obama-mania media" plainly refuses to do.
The most recent Obama biography getting a vetting by conservatives is David Maraniss' Barack Obama, the Story. Here at American Thinker, Jack Cashill has intrepidly taken up the charge, thereby provoking the wrath of the nation's "journalists" for daring to flag the contradictions in their reporting. In his most recent post, Cashill looked at several Maraniss passages related to Obama's mentor, Frank Marshall Davis. He quoted my forthcoming book on Davis, The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis, the Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mentor. I had sent Cashill a galley copy of my book, and he has done his homework well, juxtaposing my research on Davis with that of Maraniss. I'd like to here follow up.
Let me begin by sincerely expressing my admiration for David Maraniss. He really is a good journalist -- one of the best, in my view. He's an impeccably fair liberal. His work on Bill Clinton in the 1990s was superb. I used his Clinton biography, First in His Class, in one of my courses at Grove City College. His other books are likewise excellent, including his biographies of Vince Lombardi and Roberto Clemente, a childhood hero of mine (I'm a Pittsburgh native). Among these, his honesty in covering Bill Clinton was refreshing. He was not afraid to address elephants in the living room of the Clinton story. He is, however, clearly afraid to address the elephant in the living room of the Obama story -- namely, Obama's political radicalism, and particularly a young Obama's obvious interest in communism in the late 1970s and early 1980s, precisely when he knew Frank Marshall Davis.
For the record, Frank Marshall Davis was introduced to Obama by Obama's grandfather, Stanley Dunham. Dunham introduced his grandson to Davis in the 1970s -- by one (authoritative) account as early as 1970. He did so for the purpose of mentoring. And what a mentor he chose: Davis had been a literal card-carrying member of Communist Party USA (CPUSA). I have the FBI pages that list Davis's CPUSA number, which was 47544. I reprint the FBI pages in the appendix of my book. Davis did outrageous pro-Soviet propaganda work for CPUSA organs like the Chicago Star and the Honolulu Record. His writings unerringly parroted the Soviet line. Like other CPUSA members, he was a loyal Soviet patriot.
The liberal Obama biographers who bother to acknowledge Davis frame him as an innocent victim of McCarthyism. That's nonsense. McCarthy never came anywhere near Davis. No, it was anti-communist Democrats who pursued Davis, at least in part because Davis's chief target was Democratic President Harry Truman, the man opposing Joe Stalin. Davis's pro-Soviet/communist activities were first flagged in a 1944 report by the Democrat-run House Committee on Un-American Activities. When he was finally called to Washington to testify for those activities, it was by the Democrat-run Senate Judiciary Committee. It was the Democratic Senate that, in a 1957 report (tellingly) titled "Scope of Soviet Activity in the United States," stated categorically that Davis was "an identified member of the Communist Party."
And this, ladies and gentlemen, was a man who would go on to mentor the current president of the United States of America."
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View the complete article at:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/...st_mentor.html
American Thinker
Paul Kengor
7/9/2012
Excerpt:
"It's interesting that not only does Barack Obama need continued vetting, but so do his biographers. The culprit is the same: the liberal bias that dutifully protects Obama like white knights guarding the king's castle, shamelessly tossing journalistic objectivity right out the window. As Sean Hannity likes to say, when it comes to Obama's background, it has fallen to us conservatives to do the job that the mainstream "Obama-mania media" plainly refuses to do.
The most recent Obama biography getting a vetting by conservatives is David Maraniss' Barack Obama, the Story. Here at American Thinker, Jack Cashill has intrepidly taken up the charge, thereby provoking the wrath of the nation's "journalists" for daring to flag the contradictions in their reporting. In his most recent post, Cashill looked at several Maraniss passages related to Obama's mentor, Frank Marshall Davis. He quoted my forthcoming book on Davis, The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis, the Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mentor. I had sent Cashill a galley copy of my book, and he has done his homework well, juxtaposing my research on Davis with that of Maraniss. I'd like to here follow up.
Let me begin by sincerely expressing my admiration for David Maraniss. He really is a good journalist -- one of the best, in my view. He's an impeccably fair liberal. His work on Bill Clinton in the 1990s was superb. I used his Clinton biography, First in His Class, in one of my courses at Grove City College. His other books are likewise excellent, including his biographies of Vince Lombardi and Roberto Clemente, a childhood hero of mine (I'm a Pittsburgh native). Among these, his honesty in covering Bill Clinton was refreshing. He was not afraid to address elephants in the living room of the Clinton story. He is, however, clearly afraid to address the elephant in the living room of the Obama story -- namely, Obama's political radicalism, and particularly a young Obama's obvious interest in communism in the late 1970s and early 1980s, precisely when he knew Frank Marshall Davis.
For the record, Frank Marshall Davis was introduced to Obama by Obama's grandfather, Stanley Dunham. Dunham introduced his grandson to Davis in the 1970s -- by one (authoritative) account as early as 1970. He did so for the purpose of mentoring. And what a mentor he chose: Davis had been a literal card-carrying member of Communist Party USA (CPUSA). I have the FBI pages that list Davis's CPUSA number, which was 47544. I reprint the FBI pages in the appendix of my book. Davis did outrageous pro-Soviet propaganda work for CPUSA organs like the Chicago Star and the Honolulu Record. His writings unerringly parroted the Soviet line. Like other CPUSA members, he was a loyal Soviet patriot.
The liberal Obama biographers who bother to acknowledge Davis frame him as an innocent victim of McCarthyism. That's nonsense. McCarthy never came anywhere near Davis. No, it was anti-communist Democrats who pursued Davis, at least in part because Davis's chief target was Democratic President Harry Truman, the man opposing Joe Stalin. Davis's pro-Soviet/communist activities were first flagged in a 1944 report by the Democrat-run House Committee on Un-American Activities. When he was finally called to Washington to testify for those activities, it was by the Democrat-run Senate Judiciary Committee. It was the Democratic Senate that, in a 1957 report (tellingly) titled "Scope of Soviet Activity in the United States," stated categorically that Davis was "an identified member of the Communist Party."
And this, ladies and gentlemen, was a man who would go on to mentor the current president of the United States of America."
.......................................
View the complete article at:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/...st_mentor.html