Flashback: In 2008, The New York Times Claimed Obama's Admitted Drug Use Was Probably Exaggerated For Effect

Nice piece from Slate, of all places.

Factually, I mean. Let's just say I think the blogger here is a tad crabbed in what conclusions he's willing to draw; the words "Gee, sure seems like the New York Times was presenting its best spin on its product!" don't cross his lips.

Still, he got the fact of it. We can add in our own conclusions.

Here's the New York Times, quoting a passage from Obama's own book, describing how he's about to shoot up... heroin.

Yes, heroin. (As everyone on the right is now saying: My God, how did we not read this book?)

“Junkie. Pothead. That’s where I’d been headed: the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man,” he penned in the memoir.

…

Mr. Obama describes a scene in that period where, in the meat freezer of a deli, he watched someone named Micky — “my potential initiator” — pull out “the needle and the tubing,” apparently to shoot up heroin. Alarmed, Mr. Obama wrote that he imagined how an air bubble could kill him.

Well, a presidential candidate who smokes pot, did "a little blow," and was one plunge away from shooting up heroin.

That's somethin'.

But the Times didn't think so.

The Times spun this to readers who might be a little alarmed by the Junkie President, to reassure him, "Don't sweat it, he's just lying. He lies a lot."

Mr. Obama’s account of his younger self and drugs, though, significantly differs from the recollections of others who do not recall his drug use. That could suggest he was so private about his usage that few people were aware of it, that the memories of those who knew him decades ago are fuzzy or rosier out of a desire to protect him, or that he added some writerly touches in his memoir to make the challenges he overcame seem more dramatic.

In more than three dozen interviews, friends, classmates and mentors from his high school and Occidental recalled Mr. Obama as being grounded, motivated and poised, someone who did not appear to be grappling with any drug problems and seemed to dabble only with marijuana.

Except... he says he did "a little blow."

That's one witness, right? The man himself writing his first autobiography?!

But the Times talked to three dozen "friends" and classmates, and they weren't willing to rat on him, so they actually claimed he was lying in his book.

I guess they never spoke to the old Choom Gang, huh?

Who the hell did they speak to? Bill Ayers?

Is the Times now willing to correct this article?

posted by Ace at 01:02 PM

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