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Notes -
He dabbled in homosexuality? Is that in the link?
Edit: Checking I found these two references-
"Yet when it came out six years ago, Rising Star was mostly ignored; as a result, its most scandalous and perhaps revelatory passages, such as Obama’s long letter to another girlfriend about his fantasies of having sex with men, read today, to people who are more familiar with the Obama myth than the historical record, like partisan bigotry."
"With Alex [McNear, Obama’s girlfriend at Occidental College], I think she wanted to have her role known. So when Alex showed me the letters from Barack, she redacted one paragraph in one of them and just said, “It’s about homosexuality.”"
If its just one paragraph out of a letter doesn't to an ex, doesn't look like evidence for 'dabbling.'
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There has been a lot of gossip for years about Obama with potential gay lovers or escapades in his history. Most of them have not passed unicorn tabloid levels of credibility, but there's a certain plausibility there, in the sense that it's plausible if you want to believe it and implausible if you don't. But yes, the source above finally claims to have uncovered some harder proof than the he-said-he-said hush-hush rumormongering that's come before.
It has to be said of Obama that his personal history is pretty squeaky-clean, and he's not prone to the personal scandals of other presidents. No prostitutes and hookers, Stormy Daniels, Monica, drinking, drugs, bad parties, bad reputation. He definitely smoked some pot in college and quite possibly dabbled in heavier stuff, but, most likely, he never got up to anything anyone would really care about anymore. It's always possible that he has some skeletons deep in the closet (and with the fawning media abeyance it's possible his closet is much deeper than it appears). But Obama has always been a boring cipher around whom much more controversial personalities affiliate. (Hell, one of his mentors was Bill Ayers, who lead a literal terrorist bombing campaign in the 70s, and this issue has been so effectively framed that bringing it up makes one sound like a right-wing crackpot and not a serious talker.)
There are three things that make it at least plausible: he doesn’t seem, to my eyes very affectionate to Michelle Obama, he has zero sex scandals in his past, and these rumors has been around for a while.
As far as Barack and Michelle, I just don’t recall him ever being affectionate. They don’t hold hands, they don’t kiss in public (or at least nothing more than a perfunctory peck. He doesn’t seem to ever put his arm around her or help her through doorways. In fact, if you see them together, you only click them as a couple because you’ve been told they are. And that’s pretty indicative to me that their marriage is much more an arrangement than a romance. That might just be that she wants power. Who knows.
Second, the fact that the single most powerful person on the planet has no sex scandals at all actually is pretty weird. He’s surrounded by people who have a lot to gain by making him happy, an intern working for the president is making her career and would be at least strongly incentivized to go along. Bill Clinton could get interns to do sex acts as governor of a podunk state that has nothing special about it. Obama was much more powerful. The fact that he’s never had something like that ever seems a bit odd.
Finally, these rumors have, as far as I know, been pretty steady. The first being an ex girlfriend from the 1970s, but it’s not exactly going away either. And usually in scandals, if you find multiple people saying the same things over time, they tend to be true.
Seems like you answered your own question: the implicit social contract that allowed Kennedy to go around fucking up a storm is done because the press and their opponents are no longer going to sweep it under the rug or ignore it.
So there's some selection pressure for a man who won't act like a traditional emperor would.
Trump is obviously a huge exception* but does anyone think Romney wouldn't have been equally as boring? Hell, isn't that the whole appeal of Mormons?
* Although it's interesting we spent years hearing about Stormy Daniels from the most sex-positive Democratic Party to ever exist...
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This argument runs counter to the internet conspiracy that Michelle is / was a man and their children are not their natural children.
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Would it even be a scandal though?
"The first Black president is also the first Bi president" sounds like more of a Pride Month headline than a scandalous one to me.
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Gosh durn it, I don't like speculating about the sex lives of politicians, but I wonder if that "I think I might be gay or at least bi" wasn't the male version of college-age women dabbling in being lesbian? In order to make themselves more interesting than plain vanilla whitebread (if you excuse that in this context) conventional personality?
It's a great way of faking sincerity: oh, I feel so comfortable with you I can access my emotional side and talk about my deepest fantasies. All in the service of getting into someone's pants, which if they were dating at the time, seems to have worked. He started college at the very end of the 70s so there might have been some of that 70s sexual liberation politics still going around then, where being not-a-plain boring straight-guy gives you added value in the dating market.
I have to agree with the above, that if there was any ex-boyfriend (even of the drunken college boys messing around variety), we'd have heard of it by now, they'd have rushed to the media to peddle their story. So all confined to fantasies, that he's writing in letters to his girlfriend, and may not even be real fantasies, just something he made up to pique her interest.
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I didn't realize pretending to be hetero-queer to get college-educated pussy was such an old tradition.
All the nice girls like a sailor! 😁
"All the nice girls" is a damn lie, but the ones who give head... ;-)
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