Obama, the African Colonial

American Thinker ^ | June 25, 2009 | L.E. Ikenga

[neverdem]

Had Americans been able to stop obsessing over the color of Barack Obama's skin and instead paid more attention to his cultural identity, maybe he would not be in the White House today. The key to understanding him lies with his identification with his father, and his adoption of a cultural and political mindset rooted in postcolonial Africa.

Like many educated intellectuals in postcolonial Africa, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. was enraged at the transformation of his native land by its colonial conqueror. But instead of embracing the traditional values of his own tribal cultural past, he embraced an imported Western ideology, Marxism. I call such frustrated and angry modern Africans who embrace various foreign "isms", instead of looking homeward for repair of societies that are broken, African Colonials. They are Africans who serve foreign ideas.

The tropes of America's racial history as a way of understanding all things black are useless in understanding the man who got his dreams from his father, a Kenyan exemplar of the African Colonial.

Before I continue, I need to say this: I am a first generation born West African-American woman whose parents emigrated to the U.S. in the 1970's from the country now called Nigeria. I travel to Nigeria frequently. I see myself as both a proud American and as a proud Igbo (the tribe that we come from -- also sometimes spelled Ibo). Politically, I have always been conservative (though it took this past election for me to commit to this once and for all!); my conservative values come from my Igbo heritage and my place of birth. Of course, none of this qualifies me to say what I am about to -- but at the same time it does.

My friends, despite what CNN and the rest are telling you, Barack Obama is nothing more than an old school African Colonial who is on his way to turning this country into one of the developing nations that you learn about on the National Geographic Channel. Many conservative (East, West, South, North) African-Americans like myself -- those of us who know our history -- have seen this movie before. Here are two main reasons why many Americans allowed Obama to slip through the cracks despite all of his glaring inconsistencies:

First, Obama has been living on American soil for most of his adult life. Therefore, he has been able to masquerade as one who understands and believes in American democratic ideals. But he does not. Barack Obama is intrinsically undemocratic and as his presidency plays out, this will become more obvious. Second, and most importantly, too many Americans know very little about Africa. The one-size-fits-all understanding that many Americans (both black and white) continue to have of Africa might end up bringing dire consequences for this country.

Contrary to the way it continues to be portrayed in mainstream Western culture, Africa is not a continent that can be solely defined by AIDS, ethnic rivalries, poverty and safaris. Africa, like any other continent, has an immense history defined by much diversity and complexity. Africa's long-standing relationship with Europe speaks especially to some of these complexities -- particularly the relationship that has existed between the two continents over the past two centuries. Europe's complete colonization of Africa during the nineteenth century, also known as the Scramble for Africa, produced many unfortunate consequences, the African colonial being one of them.

The African colonial (AC) is a person who by means of their birth or lineage has a direct connection with Africa. However, unlike Africans like me, their worldviews have been largely shaped not by the indigenous beliefs of a specific African tribe but by the ideals of the European imperialism that overwhelmed and dominated Africa during the colonial period. AC's have no real regard for their specific African traditions or histories.  AC's use aspects of their African culture as one would use pieces of costume jewelry: things of little or no value that can be thoughtlessly discarded when they become a negative distraction, or used on a whim to decorate oneself in order to seem exotic. (Hint: Obama's Muslim heritage).

On the other hand, AC's strive to be the best at the culture that they inherited from Europe. Throughout the West, they are tops in their professions as lawyers, doctors, engineers, Ivy League professors and business moguls; this is all well and good. It's when they decide to engage us as politicians that things become messy and convoluted.

The African colonial politician (ACP) feigns repulsion towards the hegemonic paradigms of Western civilization. But at the same time, he is completely enamored of the trappings of its aristocracy or elite culture. The ACP blames and caricatures whitey to no end for all that has gone wrong in the world. He convinces the masses that various forms of African socialism are the best way for redressing the problems that European colonialism motivated in Africa. However, as opposed to really being a hard-core African Leftist who actually believes in something, the ACP uses socialist themes as a way to disguise his true ambitions: a complete power grab whereby the "will of the people" becomes completely irrelevant.

Barack Obama is all of the above. The only difference is that he is here playing (colonial) African politics as usual.  

In his 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father -- an eloquent piece of political propaganda -- Obama styles himself as a misunderstood intellectual who is deeply affected by the sufferings of black people, especially in America and Africa. In the book, Obama clearly sees himself as an African, not as a black American. And to prove this, he goes on a quest to understand his Kenyan roots. He is extremely thoughtful of his deceased father's legacy; this provides the main clue for understanding Barack Obama.

Barack Obama Sr. was an African colonial to the core; in his case, the apple did not fall far from the tree. All of the telltale signs of Obama's African colonialist attitudes are on full display in the book -- from his feigned antipathy towards Europeans to his view of African tribal associations as distracting elements that get in the way of "progress".  (On p. 308 of Dreams From My Father, Obama says that African tribes should be viewed as an "ancient loyalties".)

Like imperialists of Old World Europe, the ACP sees their constituents not as free thinking individuals who best know how to go about achieving and creating their own means for success. Instead, the ACP sees his constituents as a flock of ignorant sheep that need to be led -- oftentimes to their own slaughter.

Like the European imperialist who spawned him, the ACP is a destroyer of all forms of democracy.

Here are a few examples of what the British did in order to create (in 1914) what is now called Nigeria and what Obama is doing to you: 

1. Convince the people that "clinging" to any aspect of their cultural (tribal) identity or history is bad and regresses the process of "unity". British Imperialists deeply feared people who were loyal to anything other than the state. "Tribalism" made the imperialists have to work harder to get people to just fall in line. Imperialists pitted tribes against each other in order to create chaos that they then blamed on ethnic rivalry. Today many "educated" Nigerians, having believed that their traditions were irrelevant, remain completely ignorant of their ancestry and the history of their own tribes.
2. Confiscate the wealth and resources of the area that you govern by any means necessary in order to redistribute wealth. The British used this tactic to present themselves as empathetic and benevolent leaders who wanted everyone to have a "fair shake". Imperialists are not interested in equality for all. They are interested in controlling all.  
3. Convince the masses that your upper-crust university education naturally puts you on an intellectual plane from which to understand everything even when you understand nothing. Imperialists were able to convince the people that their elite university educations allowed them to understand what Africa needed. Many of today's Nigerians-having followed that lead-hold all sorts of degrees and certificates-but what good are they if you can't find a job?   
4. Lie to the people and tell them that progress is being made even though things are clearly becoming worse.  One thing that the British forgot to mention to their Nigerian constituents was that one day, the resources that were being used to engineer "progress" (which the British had confiscated from the Africans to begin with!) would eventually run out. After WWII, Western Europe could no longer afford to hold on to their African colonies. So all of the counterfeit countries that the Europeans created were then left high-and-dry to fend for themselves. This was the main reason behind the African independence movements of the1950 and 60's. What will a post-Obama America look like?
5. Use every available media outlet to perpetuate the belief that you and your followers are the enlightened ones-and that those who refuse to support you are just barbaric, uncivilized, ignorant curmudgeons.  This speaks for itself.

America, don't be fooled. The Igbos were once made up of a confederacy of clans that ascribed to various forms of democratic government. They took their eyes off the ball and before they knew it, the British were upon them. Also, understand this: the African colonial who is given too much political power can only become one thing: a despot.

L.E. Ikenga can be reached at leikenga@gmail.com.

[hoosiermama]

“Stanley Ann Dunham had sent her a post-card from a ship. In February. 1961. Imagine that. “

Look around while you’re here FRED is fantastic!

[hoosiermama]

How about a ship board marriage....Think I may have seen where the burials at sea are in the achives ....how about the marriages...

Guy my computer is just too slow to do deep investigation (hope to get a dish for it soon $$$)

Marriage and then a nice cruise for the honeymoon....

[Fred Nerks]

Shipboard marriage? The Black Star Line, established by Nkrumah had some 14 cargo ships that initially carried mostly cocoa to ports around the world.

Back aways there are a couple of stories how certain ships from the Line carried people from the US to Ghana. I don’t know when that started, the shipping line brochure is dated 1965, and the ‘Afram River’ is quoted as making her maiden voyage in the ‘early sixties’ - notice, Malcolm X brother met the ship on one occasion. He is described as the son of ‘Garveyites’ - after Marcus Garvey.

Ghana ‘gained’ independence in 1957. One of the first acts by Nkrumah was to re-establish the Black Star Line. Cargo ships from the line departing from the US side of the Great Lakes would have crossed the Atlantic heading back to Ghana.

IMO she was on her own. Pregnant.Banished to Ghana.

[BP2]

With everything else going on, I dropped the ball on getting this out a couple of days ago, Fred — sorry.

One VERY important tidbit not included in the Post #7170 regarding the NEVER BEFORE RELEASED Susan Blake interview:

Susan Blake said, then retracted, that she received a post card from Stanley (Ann Dunham) from a ship in February or March of 1961. When asked where it was headed, she said she did not know. Immediately in the next breath, Blake said she was just guessing about the ship. Then she also said that instead of a postcard, it was a actually a letter from Ann in Spring of 1961, stating she had been married and was expecting a baby, but didn't remember from where the letter was sent.

This information about the ship came about two-thirds the way in the interview. By this point, the interviewer had also been told that Ann said she was on her way out to Boston in August 1961 -- a year before Obama SR started attending Harvard -- and quite frankly, he began to think Blake was making things up “on the fly”. Because the interviewer was already dismissing parts of her statements by this point, and then she retracted this, he didn't think much of it (neither did I at the time). That's when the interviewer asked the "money question" about Obama's citizenship, and she hung up.

To add to this concept of a ship ride to Kenya, here's this from Michael Patrick Leahy book, “What Does Barack Obama Believe?” when he interviewed Blake in August 2008: "If Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, there is no indication that Barack Obama Senior was present at the birth of his third child. Stanley Ann's high school classmate Susan Blake had the impression that he was not there, and may not even have been on the island of Hawaii at the time..."

The address on the famed Honolulu Advertiser Obama birth announcement, 6085 Kalaniaole Hwy, is 15 miles from the University of Hawaii campus. It was an expensive area of the island, in an area not populated by students (as owning and operating a car on Hawaii was/is expensive).

Also, accounts indicate that Obama SR's family wasn't happy upon learning about Ann. They were said to be upset, in addition to other reasons, that he was not honoring the dowry of 14 cows given to Keiza's family when he married her in January 1957.

IF Barack was still in Kenya if he and Ann took a boat ride there in Feb-Mar 1961, and Ann decided to leave once she was permitted to do so after the baby was born, that could explain this part of the story about a possible ship-ride to Kenya, as well as a flight back to Washington state three weeks after Obama JR's birth (perhaps via Hawaii en route to file a Kenyan BC).

[Electric Graffiti]

Great thread....I can believe that scenario of Stanley Ann jumping on a ship. She got that 3rd world grass hut romance bug early on. The African Queen.

[BP2]

Although Ann’s mom found Obama Sr “bright”, neither she nor Ann’s father approved of the relationship.

If she was in Kenya until immediately after birth, yet too ashamed to come back home to her parents in Hawaii, tail tucked with a baby, perhaps given hush money by Obama Sr’s tribe, she’d likely go to the next best place. Where she grew up as a teen and had some friends — Seattle.

[Fred Nerks]

Did you know that even today you can board a cargo ship via Chicago from Lake Michigan and head across the Atlantic Ocean...

http://greencouple.com/2009/02/04/extreme-green-travel-by-cargo-ship/

And in 1964, look who met a Black Star Line ship:

....Some elder Detroit black nationalists recall the visit of a Black Star steamship in August 1964. Malcolm X’s eldest brother, the late Wilfred Little Shabazz, himself a son of Garveyites, told the author of his pride at meeting the ship’s captain and posing for photographs, one of which appeared in Now, a black nationalist magazine published by Detroit attorney Milton Henry.

http://afgen.com/kwame_nkrumah.html

[Fred Nerks]

THE CAST OF CHARACTERS TO DATE - SORRY FOR ANY I MAY HAVE MISSED.

[Fred Nerks]

On reading your extensive comment again, I find this reference by Michael Patrick Leahy of great interest:

To add to this concept of a ship ride to Kenya, here's this from Michael Patrick Leahy book, “What Does Barack Obama Believe?” when he interviewed Blake in August 2008: "If Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, there is no indication that Barack Obama Senior was present at the birth of his third child. Stanley Ann's high school classmate Susan Blake had the impression that he was not there, and may not even have been on the island of Hawaii at the time..."

Methinks it was STANLEY ANN DUNHAM who was NOT in Hawaii at the time...

Also, accounts indicate that Obama SR's family wasn't happy upon learning about Ann. They were said to be upset, in addition to other reasons, that he was not honoring the dowry of 14 cows given to Keiza's family when he married her in January 1957.

Obama Sr was born in 1936, IIRC. He left school in 1953 when he was 17. At 18 he was married to Kezia. That would make it 1954. They had a son. Kezia was again pregnant we are told, when Obama Sr left Kenya.

Dowry of 14 cows in 1957 sounds like whoever wrote this thinks we are idiots who will swallow anything.

This is where Obama Sr went to school:

LINK

The students were taught sciences, art and technical subjects, including carpentry and tailoring. Otula says Obama Sr went straight to the US from Maseno, to start his academic tour. He later married an American woman, the mother of Senator Obama.

What? No one told him about the tribal marriage, the 14 cows...?

[Fred Nerks]

On reading your extensive comment again, I find this reference by Michael Patrick Leahy of great interest:

To add to this concept of a ship ride to Kenya, here's this from Michael Patrick Leahy book, “What Does Barack Obama Believe?” when he interviewed Blake in August 2008: "If Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, there is no indication that Barack Obama Senior was present at the birth of his third child. Stanley Ann's high school classmate Susan Blake had the impression that he was not there, and may not even have been on the island of Hawaii at the time..."

Methinks it was STANLEY ANN DUNHAM who was NOT in Hawaii at the time...

Also, accounts indicate that Obama SR's family wasn't happy upon learning about Ann. They were said to be upset, in addition to other reasons, that he was not honoring the dowry of 14 cows given to Keiza's family when he married her in January 1957.

Obama Sr was born in 1936, IIRC. He left school in 1953 when he was 17. At 18 he was married to Kezia. That would make it 1954. They had a son. Kezia was again pregnant we are told, when Obama Sr left Kenya.

Dowry of 14 cows in 1957 sounds like whoever wrote this thinks we are idiots who will swallow anything.

This is where Obama Sr went to school:

LINK

The students were taught sciences, art and technical subjects, including carpentry and tailoring. Otula says Obama Sr went straight to the US from Maseno, to start his academic tour. He later married an American woman, the mother of Senator Obama.

What? No one told him about the tribal marriage, the 14 cows...?

[MHGinTN]

Something tells me this thread is destined for thousands of posts, eventually. And we sure need it, too.

[Fred Nerks]

thanks, that’s why I keep adding to it. I am looking ahead.

Here’s my Motto:

If we don’t know the past, we cannot understand the present nor predict the future.

[Fred Nerks]

HOW MBOYA FOUGHT BACK BUT LOST THE BATTLE

link

excerpts:

...Mboya probably made things worse for himself by the clinical and ruthless methods to consign his nemesis, Odinga, to political oblivion. Mboya played a key part in watering down the Independence Constitution to concentrate powers in the presidency.

The manoeuvres did not stop with the Constitution. For instance, Mboya proposed a new Kanu structure in which the party would have eight vice-presidents, one from each of the country’s eight province.

This amendment sailed through and effectively wiped out the power base of Odinga, then the party vice-president. Jaramogi resigned. But Mboya’s craftiness did not end there...

"...He led the first-ever delegation of Luo elders, businessmen and intellectuals to visit Kenyatta at State House, Nairobi. A memorandum was presented to the president assuring him of their loyalty to his leadership.

"There are too many careless and reckless statements abroad and here, branding all Luos supporters of KPU and hence anti-Government. What you see here, your Excellency, are the true leaders of the Luo," Mboya said.

Another constitutional amendment, this time in Parliament, requiring that any candidate who changed political parties seek fresh mandate from the people, swiftly sailed through.

Many people believed that Mboya was being groomed by Kenyatta as a potential successor, a possibility that worried the ruling elite. When Mboya suggested in Parliament that a number of Kikuyu politicians, including members of Kenyatta’s extended family, were enriching themselves at the expense of other Kenyans, the situation became highly charged.

On July 5 1969, Mboya was slain and the assassin was Kikuyu. This pushed animosity between the Kikuyu and Luo to a new high.

Allegations linking the assassin to prominent Government officials were dismissed, and in the ensuing political turmoil, Kenyatta banned the opposition party, KPU, and arrested Odinga, the leader.

[Fred Nerks]

In 1958 Mboya attended a convention of African nationalists at Accra, Ghana. He was elected chairman and declared it "the proudest day of my life." The following year he received his first honorary doctorate, and helped set up the African-American Students Foundation which raised money to subsidise the cost of flights for East African students studying in America. In 1960 the Kenya African National Union, KANU, was formed from the remnants of the KAU and Mboya elected secretary-general.

SOURCE

-------------

...On a hot July weekend nearly 40 years ago, Barack Obama Sr. was shopping on a busy Nairobi street when he ran into his friend and mentor Tom Mboya, one of Kenya's most charismatic political leaders. The two chatted for several minutes and Obama kidded him that his car was illegally parked.

"I told him, 'You are parked on a yellow line. You will get a ticket," Obama, the late father of the US presidential candidate, would later testify, according to press accounts at the time. And then the two men parted.

Minutes later, Mboya was shot twice and died in a pool of blood. It was a crime that convulsed the newly independent nation and would, in Obama's eyes, trigger a steep decline in his own promising career. Then 33, and a freshly minted government economist, he testified in the ensuing trial, an act which probably enraged those responsible for Mboya's assassination.

Obama, according to one friend, was convinced he had been targeted for murder after his testimony.

SOURCE

-------

Kenya: LUCAS MBOYA. WHO KILLED MY FATHER?

excerpt:

"When my late father died I was I had been on God’s good earth for 21 months. As I grew up I had to grope my way around trying to find out who my father was and why he had been killed. Answers I got ranged from ‘he was a criminal and CIA agent’, to ‘he was next in line for the Presidency’, which I do now believe was the case. What I would like to do now is explore the real reason why Tom Mboya was killed and by whom. I will for legal reasons make many references to a book, ‘Tom Mboya, The Man Kenya Wanted to Forget”, David Goldsworthy. My goal is to first get Kenyans to understand that I believe my fathers’ death was the point in Kenyas’ history that the two most influential tribes parted, both publicly and permanently and this acrimony has been the root cause of most of the political problems Kenya has had to date...

SOURCE

[Fred Nerks]

source

As a Nairobi bureaucrat, Barack Hussein Obama Sr. advised the pro-Western Kenyan government there to "redistribute" income through higher taxes. He also demonized corporations and called for massive government "investment" in social programs.

Writing in a 1965 scholarly paper, Obama's late father slammed the administration of then-President Jomo Kenyatta for moving the Third World country away from socialism toward capitalism. He chafed at the idea of relying on private investors — who earn "dividends" on their venture capital — to develop the country's fledgling economy.

"What is more important is to find means by which we can redistribute our economic gains to the benefit of all," said the senior Obama, a Harvard-educated economist. "This is the government's obligation." The "means" he had in mind were confiscatory taxes on a scale that redefines the term "progressive taxation."

"Theoretically," he wrote, "there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed."

Therefore, he added, "I do not see why the government cannot tax those who have more and syphon some of these revenues into savings which can be utilized in investment for future development."...

"One who has read Marx cannot fail to see that corporations are not only what Marx referred to as the advanced stage of capitalism," he wrote. "But Marx even called it finance capitalism by which a few would control the finances of so many, and through this, have not only economic power but political power as well."

[Fred Nerks]

Du Bois: The color line and the new millennium The New Crisis, Jul 1998

excerpt:

Today, globalization is becoming the catchword for universal progress among Europeans. There is a growing realization among people of color worldwide of the attempt at globalization of the color line to facilitate that socalled progress. This is true not only in North America but also throughout Europe-and wherever Europe's kith and kin rule; neofacist, racist formations and sentiments proliferate; violence and arson are perpetrated against people of color; and wholesale anti-immigration moves to are made to dominate the political landscape. All go unreported by the U.S. media to the American people. Europe and North America are responding in the only way they know to a growing challenge to their hegemony from the developing world of people of color, which totals some fourfifths of humanity. Du Bois believed in democracy If we believe in democracy we must know, whatever the struggle, the outcome is inevitable.

David G. Du Bois is president and CEO of the WE.B. Du Bois Foundation Inc., and visiting professor of journalism / Afro-American Studies, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Source

Obituary: David G. DuBois, retired Afro-American Studies and Journalism scholar

David Graham DuBois, 79, of Amherst, retired visiting professor of Afro-American Studies and Journalism, died Jan. 28 at Cooley Dickinson Hospital after a brief illness.

He was March 9, 1925 in Seattle, Wash., and grew up in African Methodist Episcopal church parsonages around the state of Indiana under the guidance of his maternal grandparents, the Rev. David A. Graham and Etta Bell Graham.

He attended Oberlin Conservatory of Music before serving in the armed forces during World War II. Following the war, he graduated in 1950 from Hunter College with a degree in sociology.

In 1951, his mother, Shirley Graham, married African-American theorist and historian W.E.B. Du Bois and soon after he legally became David Graham DuBois.

After graduate work at the New York School of Social Work at Columbia University, DuBois earned an M.A. in history from New York University in 1956.

Following a year’s study in Chinese language at Peking University, DuBois took up residence in Cairo, Egypt in 1960. He lectured in American literature at Cairo University and served as news editor of the English language daily, The Egyptian Gazette. DuBois also was a reporter and features editor for the Middle East News and Features Service agency, an announcer and program writer for Radio Cairo’s shortwave English language transmissions to North America, and a public relations consultant to the government of Ghana under President Kwame Nkrumah.

In 1972, DuBois returned to the U.S. where he lectured in African-American studies at the school of criminology at the University of California, Berkeley. From 1973-75, he was editor-in-chief of The Black Panther, the weekly newspaper of the Black Panther Party published in Oakland, California.

In 1973, his novel “And Bid Him Sing,” was published by Rampart Press. The book was based on the experiences of African-Americans in Egypt in the period leading up to the 1967 Mideast war.

DuBois returned to Egypt in 1977 and made Cairo his second home. In 1983, he was appointed a visiting professor of Afro-American studies and journalism at UMass Amherst, where he taught each spring semester until his retirement in 2001.

He was the founding president of the W.E.B. Du Bois Foundation, Inc., honoring his step-father, a member of the management committee of the W.E.B. Du Bois Memorial Centre for Pan-African Culture located in Accra, Ghana, and a member of the Council of the China-Du Bois Study Centre located in Beijing.

A memorial service will be held Sunday, Feb. 27, 2-5 p.m. in the Lincoln Campus Center Auditorium.

February 1, 2005.

SOURCE

-----

Joshua DuBois: Obama's Pastor-in-Chief

Obama has charged DuBois — who will lead a council of 25 influential religious and nonprofit leaders — with helping both faith-based and secular groups galvanize their communities by providing everything from social services to job training.

• Born in Bar Harbor, Me. and raised in Nashville, Tenn. and Xenia, Ohio. DuBois' stepfather is a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church; his grandmother took part in the 1960 Nashville sit-ins

SOURCE

[Iowan]

Thanks, Fred Nerks.

Check out Post #155 Ping

[Fred Nerks]

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Alphonse Fletcher University Professor

Director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for

African and African American Research

Address:

Harvard University W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Studies

[LibertyRocks]

Catching up here... Excellent thread, and it was desperately needed - at least for myself! LOL

I noticed you made a brief mention of Maya Angelou (living in Harlem for a time before marrying the African man). I read an autobiography of Maya’s that I picked up at the thrift store — only got 3/4 of the way through when I realized how incredibly socialist/communist she really is and couldn’t force myself to read through to the end... This is all from memory, and I’d have to find the books to give you names... And, there is much more than I can explain here, too...

A few things I remember — how she described meeting Louis Farrakhan, how she remembered lavish parties attended by various “leaders” when married to the African guy and living in Cairo. How enamoured she and her friends all were with Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution, etc...

As I said there are many names, and dates in that book. If I can find it readily I will scan back through it...

However, it is important to note here the modern tie-in — Oprah is a devotee of Maya Angelou (I would suspect it’s like a mother-daughter relationship in many ways). AND, we all know how exciting Obama’s candidacy and presidency is for Oprah. There are probably even more tie-ins via the women of ALL of these men in question as well.

Thanks for all the hard work on this thread — back to reading through the posts! :)