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So Obama's grandfather brought an adult mentor into his life and, it turns out, the guy wrote a pornographic "autobiography."

So what?

Are the nasty things in the creepy old book -- including sex with children -- fiction or nonfiction? The author, Frank Marshall Davis, seems to claim it was true, but autobiographers lie.

Presumably, the grandfather didn't know terrible things about Davis. We already know that Obama as a child heard some things most of us try to protect children from:

In Dreams from My Father, Obama wrote: "He would read us poetry whenever we stopped by his house, sharing whiskey with Gramps out of an emptied jelly jar.

"As the night wore on, the two of them would solicit my help in composing dirty limericks."

Obama described being counseled by Frank often and recalled drinking whiskey with him.

This is all entirely to Obama's credit. It's interesting to know something more about the Frank character he wrote about, but absolutely nothing here impugns Obama, who survived a difficult childhood and made himself into a formidable, admirable public figure (and solid husband and father).

Since Frank Davis has been identified as the author of Sex Rebel: Black, Obama has been extremely secretive about the true nature of his experience with the self-admitted deviant.

That's a reprehensible way to report silence.

Full post as published by Althouse on October 14, 2008 (boomark / email).