February 10, 2008

In more than three dozen interviews, friends, classmates and mentors from his high school and Occidental [College] 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.

Vinai Thummalapally, a former California State University student who became friendly with Mr. Obama in college, remembered him as a model of moderation — jogging in the morning, playing pickup basketball at the gym, hitting the books and socializing.

An Obama campaign spokesman angrily denied the truth of the article.

"The candidate has said that he will not allow himself to be Swift boated, and we're going to tackle these accusations right here and now.  Obama did do coke in both high school and college.  He was by no means a 'model of moderation,' in fact quite the opposite.  Not only was he involved in dangerous drugs, but he was in the process of working off a lifetime of anger at the Man, and was in fact both a stoner and an angry radical.  Heck, it's a miracle he didn't go on a string of liquor store holdups or even kill somebody.  He was that close to a dead-end life ... the fact that his subsequent trajectory looks like the launch of a Space Shuttle is beside the point.  Sure, he cruised through Occidental, then Columbia and Harvard Law, the Illinois legislature, the Senate, marriage to a stunningly beautiful and accomplished woman.... but it was hard!  he was conflicted about how ridiculously and effortlessly succcesful he was! Because at heart he's a bad guy!  A street tough!  A dangerous punk!  OK, a punk with a smile that could light up a stadium, but still a punk.  A deeply charismatic bad boy."
 
Totally impartial observer James Carville disagreed.  "Sounds to me like he was something of a Poindexter," mused the colorful media figure who in now way has a dog in this fight.  "Maybe President of the Chess Club.  Maybe even Minutes Secretary of the Mathletes."  John McCain's campaign strategy team is mulling the use of a heckler dressed as a chess piece at future Obama rallies.  "Pawn would be good, for obvious reasons," theorized one staffer who believed this reporter would respect the phrase 'off the record.'  "A Rook would be good, too sounds like crook, and for the 5% of the population with vocabularies bigger than a place mat menu, of course, "rook" means to defraud by cheating or swindling.  Yeah, that's sweet.  Barack... Ba-Rook....  Don't get Ba-rooked... oh, yeah."

UPDATE:  The accusations are serious enough that the candidate himself has addressed them.  In an interview with KFAUX radio today, Obama denied any chess or mathlete affiliation and suggested that any physical fitness regime in college was purely an effort to "get ready for the revolution." He added that his low-fat diet and choice of healthy, balanced meals was "a way of lashing out at the establishment" and that his marvelous penmanship was "a cry for help."