Situation reversed, the media would’ve prevented the man from being elected dog catcher, much less president of the United States. Had a Republican been mentored by the vocal champion of a totalitarian ideology, his career would’ve been over.
Yet Barack Obama, whose worldview was shaped by a communist, remains untouched. For roughly 10 years of his young life, from the time he was 10 until he went to college, Obama’s mentor was a man named Frank Marshall Davis. This is one of the most important facts in understanding how Obama’s mind works, yet the media, eager to hide the truth about the President’s influences, still refuses to explore Davis’s life and its relation to Obama.
That this story has been effectively covered up is a disgrace both to journalism and the citizens of the United States. That Americans laid back and allowed themselves to be spoon fed “hope and change” is an embarrassment.
The best book about Davis has just been issued in paperback. Paul Kengor’s The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor is a sober and scholarly look at Davis. Obama met Davis at a crucial point in his life. It was 1970 and Obama was nine, a kid abandoned by his father. For the next 10 years Davis would be a friend, mentor, professor and father figure to Obama. Davis was a journalist and member of the Communist Party. When these facts are mentioned out loud a tidal wave of rage from the liberal media quickly swarms and silences the person who dared to mention Davis’ name. But you don’t need to dislike Obama or simply have an interest in this incredibly bizarre and important story about the 44th president. You just have to have some intellectual curiosity.
Frank Marshall Davis was born in Kansas in 1905. Interested in journalism from a young age, he moved to Chicago in 1927 to write for the black press. Davis joined the Communist Party in Chicago in the early 1940s. CPUSA members at the time swore an oath to “ensure the triumph of Soviet power in the United States,” and Davis soon had a 600-page FBI file. In 1946 he became the founding editor-in-chief of The Chicago Star, a Party-line newspaper. Davis shared the op-ed page with the likes of Howard Fast, a “Stalin Prize” winner, and Sen. Claude “Red” Pepper, who sponsored a bill to nationalize healthcare in the United States.
Davis left the Star in 1948 for Hawaii, where he would write for the Party-line organ there, The Honolulu Record. Kengor: “His politics remained so radical that the FBI had him under continued surveillance. The federal government actually placed Davis on the Security Index, meaning that in the event of a war between the United States and USSR, Barack Obama’s mentor could be placed under immediate arrest.”
Davis and Obama met in 1970. They were introduced by Obama’s maternal grandfather, Stanley Dunham. Obama’s father had abandoned the family, and Dunham thought Davis would be a good influence on young Obama, who was casting about for an identity. In his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father, Obama notes that Davis dispensed wisdom on topics such as race, women, and jazz. “I was intrigued by old Frank,” writes Obama, “with his books and whiskey breath and the hint of hard-earned knowledge behind the hooded eyes.”
Davis was a mentor to Obama for almost 10 years, until Obama went to college. In Dreams from My Father, Obama repeatedly talks about Davis. However, as Kengor notes, in the 2005 audio version of Dreams, “Frank” is totally missing—he’s been airbrushed out of Obama’s story.
Imagine how the media would react if one of the Republican presidential candidate had a similar story, except the totalitarian cheerleader in question had been rooting for fascists instead of left-wingers. Suppose it was discovered that Scott Walker’s grandfather had introduced him to a man who swore allegiance to the Nazi party, a man who had expressed his enthusiasm for fascism in lectures and editorials over more than five decades. Think of the programming on MSNBC if it were revealed that Walker had attended a far-right conference in the 1980s, as Obama attended socialist conferences during that decade.
Now imagine that Walker had attempted to erase this man from his biography. Jon Stewart would come out of retirement to roast “Herr Walker,” complete with clips from “Apt Pupil.” Frank Bruni and Jonathan Capehart would get the vapors. Oliver Stone would not be able to launch production soon enough on a film about “Scott Walker and the Nazification of the Republican Party.” Walker would never make it past the primaries.
Yet with 18 months to go in his presidency, Obama has yet to be questioned about “old Frank.” Earlier this year Rudy Giuliani dared to make the connection between Obama and Frank Marshall Davis. Journalists reacted as if Rudy had choked a puppy on live TV.
No wonder Hillary Clinton thinks she can slip into the Oval Office without taking any questions.
