April 28, 2011: British Tabloid, Fox Nation Attack Obama’s Father, Calling Him ‘Serial Womanizer’ Who Had Penchant for White Women

A 1971 photograph of Barack Obama Sr. and Barack Obama Jr. [Source: Apex Newspix / London Daily Mail]The London Daily Mail uses information obtained by the Arizona Independent to attack President Obama’s father as a “serial womanizer” and “polygamist” whose eye for “white women” led to his expulsion from the United States. The article leads with the line, “With a father like this, it is little wonder President Obama did not want to release his full birth certificate” (see April 27, 2011). The Arizona Independent obtained files from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) that imply US government and Harvard University officials, disapproving of Barack Obama Sr.‘s “licentious” ways, forced him to leave the United States. Obama Sr. married a white woman, Stanley Ann Dunham, who became Obama Jr.‘s mother, during a time when interracial marriages were still illegal in many parts of the US; moreover, Obama Sr. apparently had a wife in Kenya, making him in the eyes of some US officials a “polygamist.” Obama Sr., a student at Harvard University, “had an eye for the ladies,” according to the documents, and was warned by Harvard officials to “stay away from girls at the university.” Obama Sr.‘s application to extend his visa to remain in the US was eventually denied, in part because of his “polygamy” and, apparently, because of his predilection for dating white women. The file quotes an unnamed government official as calling Obama Sr. a “slippery character” who dated “several women.” Another immigration memo, from June 1964, records that Harvard officials were trying “to get rid of him” and “couldn’t seem to figure out how many wives he had.” The memo, which notes that Obama Sr. and Dunham had a child, Barack Obama Jr., on August 4, 1961, goes on to say that Obama Sr. should be “closely questioned before another extension is granted—and denial be considered.” The INS officials also apparently requested that Harvard withdraw his scholarship to attend college there. The memo says: “Obama has passed his general exams, which indicates that on academic grounds he is entitled to stay around here and write his thesis; however [Harvard] are going to try to cook something up to ease him out.… They are planning on telling him that they will not give him any money, and that he had better return to Kenya and prepare his thesis at home.” Obama Sr. took classes at Harvard and at the University of Hawaii in 1960, where he met Dunham in a Russian language course. Dunham apparently knew nothing of Obama Sr.‘s wife and child in Kenya, and their divorce in 1963, when their child Barack Obama Jr. was just two, may have been triggered in part because of Obama Sr.‘s previous marriage as well as his reported philandering. Obama Jr. saw his father once after the divorce, in 1971; 11 years later, Obama Sr. was killed in a car accident. [Daily Mail, 4/28/2011] Hours after the story is published online, Fox Nation, the blog for Fox News, prints a summation of it and directs readers to it. [Fox Nation, 4/28/2011]