Martha Trowbridge: Stan The Sham, and True Love

Don your hard hat and safety goggles. There is no such person as Stanley Ann Dunham. The name was invented to hide the girl that "Barack Obama" judged America would never accept as the mother of a President, a 1950's girl whose behavior, politics, and lifestyle wouldn't find much approval, even today. "Obama's" real birth certificate isn't set in an exotic American outpost. It's got nothing to do with a corn-bred girl from Kansas, transplanted to Seattle, then once again uprooted, to be set in the soil of Hawaii. It's got nothing to do with a bigamous Kenyan, or college classmates engaging in sexual relations. No hasty marriage happened, in Hawaii or anywhere, once baby Bari was conceived. "Obama's" real birth narrative runs like this: Once upon a time, in the late 1950's, a teenage girl fro the Bronx, who was bright, rebellious and willful, fell head-over-heels for a charismatic, handsome, older man. Her name was Jo Ann Newman. It's as simple as that. However, she was white. He was black. She was single. He was married. She was a teenage 'infidel' 'townie'. He was a Muslim Minister. It's as complicated as all this. Despite her intelligence, teenage Jo Ann Newman was understandably naive. She likely didn't comprehend what she was getting herself into. Unhappy in marriage, thirty-something Malcolm X was flattered by young Jo Ann's devotion. He likely didn't anticipate the far-reaching consequences of their sexual relationship. He surely would not have predicted that half a century later, America would be engaged in digging up details about the son born of his relations with young Jo Ann, but life has a way of yielding the unpredictable. Especially when the energy invested is considerable, like Jo Ann's investment in Malcolm. For more information on Obama, go to http://terribletruth.wordpress.com/2011/11/15/stan-the-sham-and-true-love