Published July 27th, 2008
To suggest that a man must follow in the path of his father is patently ludicrous.
Likewise, to suggest that if a man’s father is a forceful personality yet the son absorbed none of the father’s philosophical and moral beliefs is equally ludicrous. Senator Barack Hussein Obama’s dad was a racist, Muslim, as well as a drunk, a womanizer, a socialist, and bigamist who abandoned his wife and son when the latter was two years old, and died a failure in life, despite his alleged “brilliance.”
This is no pun on Jesse Jackson’s overheard open mic comment, but do nuts fall far from the tree?
I freely admit that I have not read the senator’s memoir, Dreams from My Father, a Story of Race and Inheritance, nor do I plan to. 
However, I have read reviews of said book, both formal and informal, and I have closely followed the junior senator from Illinois’ recent career and campaign for the presidency. To conclude his late father did not greatly influence him does not require a great leap of imagination.
Many of the informal reviews, such as those on Amazon.com, are gushingly effusive, bordering on idolatrous, writings praising the writer and his work as “extraordinary…amazing…eloquent…inspirational…articulate,” no small praise for an unknown 34 year old from Chicago, praise which raises the specter of sycophancy. (His book was originally published in 1995 and updated in 2004, just in time for the launch of his national political career after serving as a lackluster state senator in Illinois and after being trounced 2-1 in a primary bid for Congress in 2000.)
Other reviews label Dreams as “nauseating…fluff…tedious…racist…shameless,” but someone interested in a few quick opinions won’t ever see those since the first few dozen of 265 Amazon reviews are almost entirely of the first, very favorable, type. (Could Amazon be biased?)
This is not a book review but an opinion on the candidate’s namesake and his influence on his son. The candidate testifies to that influence in the very title of his book, Dreams from My Father.
Are we expected to believe those dreams did not include...
(For the rest of this article, please see http://genelalor.com/)