Obama’s oddest critic

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 11:45:00 +0000

In the spring of 1981, a seemingly unremarkable poem called “Pop” appeared in the Occidental College literary magazine. It began:

Sitting in his seat, a seat broad and broken
In, sprinkled with ashes
Pop switches channels, takes another
Shot of Seagrams, neat, and asks
What to do with me, a green young man
Who fails to consider the
Flim and Flam of the world…

On the surface, it is a poem about a young man’s relationship with, and ambivalence toward, a paternal figure. But in recent years, attentive readers have noticed some extraordinary subtext: In fact, it is a poem about pederasty and sexual abuse. What’s more, it is shot through with clues that its author -- Barack Obama -- was not its author at all, that “Pop” himself was its true author, and that “Pop” was also, unbeknownst to its false author, its false author’s true father.

Salon.com > Jack Cashill

Obama’s oddest critic