I Hate the World

[Trigger warning.]

The National Enquirer's got another election bombshell for us: Obama Sex Perv Scandal blares the breathless headline in big, red, block letters. What could it be? Did he have an affair? Pay off a mistress?

No. He was allegedly mentored as a child by someone who later confessed to secretly authoring under a pseudonym in 1968 "a hard-core pornographic autobiography…laced with perverted sexual activity, bisexuality, rape—and the seduction of children. …In his shocking tell-all, [Frank Marshall Davis] admits to seducing a thirteen year-old girl, voyeurism, exhibitionism, bisexuality, rape and sadomasochism."

Obama refers to a childhood mentor named "Frank" in his 1995 memoir Dreams from My Father. The Enquirer says that "Obama insiders" have confirmed it was a reference to Frank Marshall Davis. (The Obama campaign response [pdf] to Jerome Corsi's smear job on Obama, confirms as much, so no "insiders" needed, although that does successfully imply that Obama's trying to hide something and the Enquirer's reporting is more awesome than it is.)

Provided the rest of the information about Davis provided by the salaciously voyeuristic and repugnantly unethical Enquirer is accurate, and it seems to be, the obvious follow-up questions are: 1. How is this a "scandal" for Obama, who was a child at the time of his interaction with Davis? 2. Shouldn't the primary concern be whether Obama was victimized by Davis?

Not according to the first rightwingers out of the gate, natch. (I won't provide the direct link to this bit of swill, but you can find it via John Cole, if you are so inclined.)

The National Enquirer now suggests Barack Obama had an underage, gay affair with a pedophile. Yup. That Frank Marshall Davis guy Barry says was his good friend? Turns out he was a perv of the first order and liked young boys.

How many things are wrong with that single paragraph? There's no such thing as an "underage affair with a pedophile." Affair connotes consent, something a child cannot provide. Calling it a "gay affair with a pedophile" conflates pedophilia with homosexuality, one of the oldest smears in the book. Davis was one of Obama's childhood mentors, not his "good friend." There's nothing in the Enquirer article that suggests Davis "liked young boys," which doesn't mean he didn't, but, to come to that conclusion, one must connect "pedophilia" with "bisexuality," without regard for the former being an aberrant criminal proclivity and the latter being a healthy sexuality. It is a true clusterfucktastrophe of erroneous conclusions and fucked-up (possibly deliberate) misunderstandings about sexuality and sexual assault.

But most awful is the breathless reporting which implies that the possibility Obama was sexually assaulted somehow reflects badly on him. What terrible judgment he has, to have had "an underage, gay affair with a pedophile" at 10 years old! It's a sentiment similarly proffered by another prominent rightwing blogger (to whom you can get via Brad) who wants to know: "When is someone going to question how these associations must have warped Obama's views and render him unstable, and unsuitable for the Presidency?"

And so on.

I never thought I'd see the day, even in the rightwing blogosphere, when the possible suggestion of a politician having been raped as a child was gleefully used to question his fitness for the presidency.

Maude help us all.