Dr. Drew's Rapid Response Catches News Corpse Blogger "Mark" Lying About His Claims

I noticed that Mark over at New Corpse is lying about me as part of a larger effort to smear Fox Nation for reporting my take on young Obama's ideological extremism. 

I think it is important to get on to the public record my response to Mark's efforts to undermine my credibility by suggesting that I called myself a "close friend" of young Obama, which I have not, and then using this lie as a leverage point for attacking my overall credibility.  Strictly speaking, I have written that "I certainly considered him a friend, a confidant and a political ally in the larger struggle against poverty and oppressive social systems."

Here's my response to Mark, a response that he did not allow to be published on his website.  I've cleaned it up to catch the typos, but it is substantially the way I wrote it yesterday:

Let’s get real here. First, you are lying when you write that I claimed Obama was a “close friend.” I never used those words. You use them, however, to make it look like the reality of the situation was in conflict with my own stated story. You are actually making up a statement from me…which I consider to be dishonest journalism. It is shocking to me that you accuse Fox News with promoting make believe and yet you make up the concept that I once said Obama was a “close friend.” What you do in your article is make a false claim about what I’ve said and then turn around to make it look like I have exaggerrated my contacts with young Obama – which I have not.

Chandoo is not a reliable source to attack my testimony – something you leave out of your report drawn from Ron Kessler’s article. Even worse, you left off the first part of the Chandoo quote which verifies I was in the room and that Chandoo considers me a credible source.

“If that’s what John Drew said, that’s what he said,” Chandoo commented.

I don’t see how you can leave out that quote. What is amazing is that Chandoo verified that he knew me and that we met together that evening. The smart thing would have been for Chandoo to claim he never knew me at all. He failed to do that. In this sense, I see my story collaborated. You, however, suggest my story is uncollaborated and dubious. If I had simply made up a story of arguing with young Obama, then don’t you think Chandoo would have said that?

You also lie when you write that Chandoo is a “former” Obama associate. You know from the article itself that Chandoo still sees Obama fairly frequently…at least at White House events. Mark, I can’t make these things up. You are really out and out distorting the historical record by making up a strawman comment from me and not telling your readers the whole story about what Chandoo has said in that Kessler article.

Next, my story isn’t “ancient.” My article describing meeting and debating young Obama came out in American Thinker in February 2011. I was only interviewed on the Michael Savage show last week. Fox News has only last week even acknowledged that I exist and that my story is available to scholars and opposition researchers.

Finally, you go out of your way to make it look like I’ve been inappropriately pushing my story when, in truth, what is shocking about my story is that it was not immediately picked up in 2008 when I first went public with it. Since then, however, my story has been covered in books by Michael Savage, Paul Kengor, Stanley Kurtz and Jack Cashill.

For you to suggest that my story has only been featured in “radical right-wing rags and Internet backwater rabble” strikes me as extremely odd when it has also been featured in major books produced by big name publishers.

All in all, the gap between your take on my story and the reality of the story is pretty stark.

I really think you owe me and your readers an apology and you ought to correct your story to reflect the reality of the situation. To claim, as you do, that I ever said I was a “close friend” of Obama is an obvious falsehood, a falsehood that you use to embarrass me in front of my family and my business clients – many of who are liberals or independents.

I respectfully request that you change your story to make it clear that I have never said what you are claiming I said in your article above. In addition, I want to ask that you add the full comment from Chandoo so your readers can see how it collaborated my story enough for Kessler to write it and for Newsmax to publish it. My business is dependent on my reputation for honesty and integrity. For you to make up and print obviously false information about me strikes me as deeply unfair.

MARK'S REBUTTAL IS BELOW:

John, this is getting tedious. You cannot continue to use my web site as your platform, particularly when you keep repeating the same arguments that have already been hashed over to death. Get your own blog.

As for your complaint about whether you said Obama was a “close friend,” here is what you said about it:

“I certainly considered him a friend, a confidant…”

So you may not have used the word “close” but “confidant” implies the same thing. At least to me. I don’t have any confidants who are not also close friends (and that’s as close as you’re gonna get to a correction).

I also find it curious that you’ve spent so much time and energy bitching about the word “close” on an obscure blog, but have ignored the far more misleading assertion that you and Obama were “college mates” that appeared on a far more read web site, Fox News.

As to your complaint about the age of your story, it did not begin in February 2011, as you state above. It goes back to 2008. You have acknowledged that yourself. So this story, in news terms, is ancient.

You are welcome to comment on anything else I write so long as your comment is civil, relevant, and reasonably concise. But this topic is closed due to boredom.

MY RESPONSE TO MARK:

What?! How is “confidant” the same thing as “close.? I can’t take you seriously any more. In your article above, you say I claimed to be both a “close friend” and a “confidant.” Right? You can be a confidant with someone you just met in an elevator in Las Vegas. The larger issue is that you made up a false claim from me – on purpose – to discredit me. You dehumanized me and didn’t even consider the damage you might be doing to me, my family and my business. For you to lie about what I said, in my view, totally destroys your credibility regarding everything else you write on this blog including your attacks on Fox Nation. I’ve demonstrated that your readers cannot trust you to provide honest, trustworthy information. I NEVER claimed I was a “close friend” of young Obama. NEVER.

ANOTHER RESPONSE TO MARK AND SLARTBARTFEST:

Come on. The dictionary definition shows I was on the mark using the world confidant in the sense that I considered young Obama a political associate in the larger political fight.

I think the public agrees that I’ve proven both Slartibartfast and Mark to be liars, liars who are willing to make up quotes and claims that I have supposedly asserted through my own language.

Frankly, I think that is libelous. Even as a public figure, I know that you are not supposed to knowingly lie about me in a highly visible public form.

Making up false quotes or claims strikes me as a violation of law. Whatever the faults of Fox News, they have never made up a quote and claimed I said it. Fox News has never asserted that I claimed something which I did not.

Fox News does not assert that I ever said or claimed I was a "close friend" of young Obama. Mark does. That is why Mark is a hypocrit. Slartibartfest, a Ph.D. in math from Duke University, has also been caught asserting I said I was "the best graduate student in the nation," but now he cannot prove I ever said either. (If you want to check out Kevin Kesseler "Slartibartfest" Kesseler's one page website, then you can see it here at Bespoke Modeling.) This is typical for the left. You don’t care how much you lie or who you hurt as long as you are protecting President Obama.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Catching Up with Mistake Prone "Oh, For Goodness Sake" Blogger: Dr. Drew Defends Himself, Again

I see that Anna Stoddard at "Oh, For Goodness Sake" has published a third article attacking my eye witness report on young Barack Obama's commitment to Marxist-Leninist ideology. See, http://ohforgoodnesssake.com/?p=16905 The good news is that I have moved up the scale from "...yet another bull-jiver" in February 17, 2010.

For the full story of my meeting with young Marxist Obama, see http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/02/meeting_young_obama.html

In response to the OFGS blogger, I feel a responsibility to report that I also remember I bumped into him in The Cooler on campus, I visited the apartment he shared with Chandoo and I saw him around the campus mail boxes. As I recall, on this last encounter, Obama and his roommate - Hasan Chandoo - asked me if I would be attending a graduation party with them. I think this minor increase in my reported contacts, from two to maybe five, is largely consistent with my earlier statements, particularly my statement that my insight into young Obama's true ideology depended on my role in the same "intense cultural sub-group" and not on the amount of time we spent together.

Aside from this admitted error, the Anna Stoddard relies heavily on quotes from David Remnick's book, The Bridge to attack my credibility. This is curious to me because Remnick's book came out on April 6, 2010. This was after my report on young Obama's Marxist-Leninist perspective was first published by Ronald Kessler at http://www.newsmax.com/RonaldKessler/obama-college-marxism-occidental/2010/02/08/id/349329 on February 8, 2010.

Ironically, Remnick - a liberal Democrat - confirms my take on the young Obama's ideology, relies on the same people I report hanging out with, and verifies the same social connections - including Obama's ties to Ms. Grauman-Boss and Mr. Mohammed Hasan Chandoo. Remnick's book added to my credibility because he verified the gist of my story. This is probably how I moved up Stoddard's credibility scale from "bull-jiver" to exaggerator. I suspect that the correspondence between my report and the testimony in The Bridge is the major reason my story on meeting young Obama later appeared in books by Michael Savage, Stanley Kurtz, Paul Kengor and Jack Cashill.

Strangely, Stoddard has never corrected the absurd suggestion that Ann Coulter was teaching at Cornell and that I was employed as her teaching assistant. I'm shocked Ms. Stoddard never corrected this error. I think a contentious reporter would have figured out that Coulter was a student in my discussion section, a discussion section where I was a TA for Prof. Lowi.

Stoddard suggests that I tweeted that I "attended college" with young Obama. This, of course, is not true. I think it is obvious to any one familiar with Twitter that the tweet in question did not come from me. It came from another person who was asserting that I attended college with young Obama. (Democrats, however, may not fully understand how Twitter works in the wake of the Rep. Weiner scandal.)

There is considerable irony in the fact that Margot Mifflin, Chandoo's college-era girlfriend, is quoted on page 107 of Remnick's book confirming my take on the upper class look of young Obama. She reports that some students at Occidental College did not care for young Obama because he was "too GQ." Since Anna Stoddard's quotes from Remnick's book, I should have gotten more credit for the fact that my take on Obama appearance was later verified by Mifflin's comments in The Bridge.

Stoddard also reports Obama drove a “a funky red car, a Fiat” and suggests that I missed that fact. The reality of the situation is that I report in the American Thinker article that the owner of the luxury car was Obama's friend Chandoo. Stoddard's silliness is apparent in her own words:

In a recent article on American Thinker, makes a huge deal over Obama riding in a friend’s BMW, while Obama’s friend, Paul Carpenter recalls Obama drove “a funky red car, a Fiat.” Drew probably wouldn’t have known that small detail, because Drew was not a friend of Obama’s at Occidental, as he claims.

I will also stand by the report I have made that young Obama was not particularly close to the African-American community while he was at Occidental College. Stoddard cites the statements of Eric B. Moore. However, Moore did not stay in touch with young Obama after his transfer to Columbia University. Moore did not attend Obama's wedding. Chandoo, however, was there.

Meanwhile, Remnick's own book indicates that young Obama moved in with a white male friend when he transferred to Columbia University. Obama's book, Dreams from My Father, reports that he maintained ties with Hasan Chandoo. After leaving Occidental College, however, Obama does not mention continuing ties with even one of the African-American friends he supposedly made at Occidental College.

As an eye witness to the facts surrounding young Obama's ideology, I'm not surprised that the best the left can do to challenge my story is to launch inaccurate attacks on my credibility.  These attacks are easy to refute simply by referring to the research done by one of their own - David Remnick in The Bridge.  I'm thinking that this information will be helpful on the day that I become a target of Obama's new http://www.attackwatch.com/ website.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Glorious Leader Gap: Barack Obama Considered "Gayness"

I am kind of proud to report that I got a call from Dinesh D'Souza inquiring about this photograph the young Obama. I explained that I found it while I was skimming the Occidental College alumni magazine (Summer 2010). At the same time, I also went through the class notes and found that Hasan Chandoo has been in touch with my old girlfriend Caroline Grauman-Boss and her friend Susan (Keselenko) Coll over the years.

I expect that all additional information regarding the lasting social ties between young Obama and his Occidental College friends will give additional credibility to my statements that I knew the young Obama and can affirm that he was a Marxist socialist in 1980-1981. As I have reported elsewhere, Obama and I used to be part of a strong, committed group of revolutionaries. The only difference, as far as I can tell, is that I aged out of that obnoxious ideology in my mid-20s.

Also, this photo illustrates other themes I've communicated regarding the young Obama including the fact that I never saw him with a girl and that he was strikingly effeminate at the time. The larger point, of course, is that the picture of himself that he created in Dreams from My Father is very different from the real Obama that I knew during the 1980-1981 school year.

UPDATE #1: Jerome Corsi has published a new article featuring my first impression of the young Obama. People ask me about my first impression and I tell them the truth.


UPDATE #2: Ironically, Michelle Robinson - the future first lady - apparently had her own doubts about the young Obama. She asked her brother Craig Robinson to check out Barack. Here is a great passage from Christopher Andersen's book, Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage:


Right after the game, Craig called Michelle with his verdict. "Your boy is straight," he told her, "and he can ball." (p. 126.)

Obviously, I was not the only person in young Obama's life who had questions about his sexual identity.

UPDATE #3: Jerome Corsi has another new article regarding Obama's time in Chicago which suggests that Obama hid his gay life to become president.

UPDATE #4: Rachel Maddow at MSNBC has launched an attack seeking to ridicule my first impression of young Obama.

I imagine Maddow does not have the nerve or the guts to air my complete and unedited first impression of the young Obama. Nevertheless, I am hoping this little bit of national television exposure will cause more people to look up my take on young Obama and judge its accuracy for themselves.

UPDATE #5: I met Barack Obama while he was a student at Occidental College. I have shared elsewhere that my first impression of him is that he was gay. (I was also one of the people that David Garrow interviewed for his new presidential biography, Rising Star.)

Giving Up All My Secrets: Dr. Drew Interviewed by Historian David J. Garrow

Consequently, I’m not surprised to learn that President Obama wrote that he “considered gayness” when he was younger. I think the meaning of the phrase is quite clear. Obama found men attractive enough that he seriously considered spending his entire life in a relationship with another man.

To heterosexuals, I think it sounds odd that President Obama writes that he prefers women simply because those relationships are more of a challenge. Objectively, I think it is much easier to get along with women than men. Men have a lot more testosterone which makes them quite ornery. I think, for most heterosexuals, the idea of having sex with either men or women is not decided on the basis of the comparative workload.

That being said, twin studies reveal that about half the folks who identify as gay as teenagers end up being straight when they grow up. For example, one study followed approximately 10,800 adolescents 16-22 years old. Among the 16 year-old males who had exclusively SSA, 61% had opposite-sex attraction at age 17. For same-sex attracted females, 81% changed to opposite attraction in just one year. The same study compared sexual attraction at ages 17-22 and found that 75% of adolescent males with SSA at age 17 had opposite-sex attraction at age 22.

Prevalence and stability of sexual orientation components during adolescence and young adulthood.

It looks to me like President Obama may well fall into that category of young men who have SSA but then end up with opposite-sex attraction as adults.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist. He applies his skills as a grant writing consultant in the Southern California area.

His website is at the following link: http://drdrewguaranteedgrants.com/about-us/

Face-to-Face with Young Marxist Obama: John Drew Remembers His Days as an Anti-Apartheid Activist

I was going through some old photos and found this picture of a much younger John Drew graduating from Occidental College back on June 9, 1979. As you can see, I'm wearing a red arm band. I was doing this to protest Occidental College's investments in South Africa. The fellow handing me my diploma was Occidental College president Richard C. Gilman. As I've written before, I was one of the founders of the anti-apartheid group that President Obama mentions in his book, Dreams of My Father.

From what Obama writes, I guess I had the unusual opportunity to meet the young Barack Obama at a turning point in his life. In Dreams of My Father, Obama writes he got one of the early signs of his interest (and ability) in public speaking during his participation in an anti-apartheid rally at Occidental College in Los Angeles in the spring of 1981.

I met him for the first time in late December 1980. By then, I was in my second year of graduate school at Cornell. I was visiting a girlfriend who was still attending Occidental College who introduced me to him and his friend Mohammed Hasan Chandoo, a wealthy Pakistani student.

John Drew graduates from
Occidental College as a fully
trained Marxist in June, 1979.

My most vivid memory of my time visiting with Obama was the way he strongly argued a rather simple-minded version of Marxist theory. I remember he was passionate about his point of view. As I remember, he was articulating the same Marxist theory taught by various professors at Occidental College. Based on my more detailed studies at Cornell, I remember I made a strong argument that his Marxist ideas were not in line with contemporary reality - particularly the practical experience of Western Europe.

I went on to become an assistant professor of political science at Williams College in MA, and won the William Anderson Award from the American Political Science Association for my doctoral dissertation. See,

http://anonymouspoliticalscientist.blogspot.com/2010/01/victory-is-so-sweet-for-those-who-have.html

Obama, of course, became President of the United States in 2009. I cannot help but wonder if my common sense arguments ended up impacting his decision-making and career planning.



Nevertheless, I think my experience with the young Barack Obama is useful evidence of why he was able to win the trust and support of Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn and Alice Palmer. In 1995, as you may know, Alice Palmer represented the state of Illinois' 13th District. After she decided to run for the United States Congress she named Obama as her hand-picked successor to replace her. In June 1986, Palmer wrote an article for the Communist Party USA's newspaper, the People's Daily World, now the People's Weekly World. Amazingly, it detailed her experience at the 27th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Regarding Rev. Wright's affection for Marxism and socialism, please view the YouTube video below:



My gut feeling is that Obama won the trust of folks like Palmer because he never surrendered that tough, Marxist socialist ideology I saw in him as a sophomore at Occidental College. All in all, it takes me back to remember my days as a young revolutionary, the moments when - like Barack Obama - I sincerely believed a Marxist socialist revolution was coming to turn everything around and to create a new, fairer and more just world.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist. He applies his skills as a grant writing consultant in the Southern Calfornia area. His website is at the following link: http://drdrewguaranteedgrants.com/about-us/