Here’s Mr. Obama on his way to the senior prom (Time, via Gawker). Considering that he graduated in the late 70s, the outfits are far less embarrassing than one could have hoped. My husband is only a bit younger than the president, and the suit he wore to the prom once prompted someone who saw his prom photo to laugh and ask if it was a Halloween costume.
On a more serious note, Obama is scheduled to give an address on counterterrorism today:
In his first major speech on counterterrorism of his second term, Mr. Obama hopes to refocus the epic conflict that has defined American priorities since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and even foresees an unspecified day when the so-called war on terror might all but end, according to people briefed on White House plans.
Could the war on a noun really end? The report says Obama will announce new limits on the use of drone strikes and launch a new effort to close Gitmo. I expect the reaction will range from “worse than Bush” to “worse than Neville Chamberlain.”
[X-posted at Rumproast]
gelfling545
No doubt there is a scandal to be found somewhere in this.
BGinCHI
Counter-terrorism is like the prom: you spend a lot of time worrying about penetration but in the end it rarely happens.
Redshirt
Yes, either Obama will be a ruthless dictator stripping us of our freedoms, or a weak mamby-pamby who’s weak on defense who’s threatening our children with destruction.
Take your pick! Left and Right!
Hillary Rettig
saw the prom pic; wondered for an instance if my facebook feed somehow wound up on bj ;-/
Shrillhouse
Obvious Photoshop is obvious.The Obots aren’t even trying anymore.
I’m supposed to believe the photographer “accidentally” cut them off at the waist like that?
Where’s the longform prom photo?
belieber
As I suspected, Muslim lovin usurper Obummer spend his senior year rapin our white wimmin.
Kristin
@Redshirt: While the Greenwaldian Pures will surely go with the former, the right will probably go with both and see no irony in it.
mai naem
I know what Jesse Helms would have done with this picture. Glad he’s dead. Meanwhile. Darrell Issa will start impeachment proceedings because wearing that suit is criminal. At least Obama didn’t have one of those massive 70s Pam Grier Afros.
Mike in NC
Umbrella-gate!
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@gelfling545: Well, yeah. He’s cheating on Michelle, with a white woman no less.
Mike E
Judging by the raging Orange couch fire that’s a-burning over immigration reform, one doesn’t have to be a right wing douche to be an irrational Obama hater… GOS makes me glad I changed my Dem registration to Unaffiliated, and the poo-flingers aren’t inspiring me to revert any time soon. Splitters!
joes527
Are they all drinking champagne?
gnomedad
@belieber:
They may think that, but they won’t admit it. What I think we will hear is stuff along the lines that Obama clearly had a chance to be “white” and rejected it, therefore he hates white people.
(I saw an article along these lines recently but can’t find it; this piece by Ta-Nehisi Coates is good, too.)
NonyNony
@Shrillhouse:
Don’t be an idiot – they didn’t take longform prom photos in Hawaii in the 70s.
However one of the commenters at Gawker has found the smoking guns by inspecting the background – pictures of Lenin, Mein Kampf on the bookshelf, a lampshade made of human skin! The trappings of the young anti-Christ are all there if the SHEEPLE would just WAKE UP!
piratedan
he’s worse than Neville Bush!
transitioning to wingnut mode……
he’s after the white wimmins, while evertyone else is drinking, he’s sinisterly groping/grasping those two females! Impeach!
p.s. that suit looks like it was made in Benghazi!
Cacti
@Redshirt:
It’s amazing how one man can be so many entirely contradictory things at the same time.
beltane
That picture is Pat Buchanan’s worst nightmare.
Goblue72
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): and a BLONDE white woman no less!
the Conster
That guy on the left is wicked cute. I wonder whatever became of him? My guess is that O had him rubbed out because sometime during that evening O told him he was a secret Muslim Kenyan well on the way to instituting his plot to become president so he could destroy the country.
JPL
I’m confused. I didn’t realize that is how Kenyans dress for their proms.
Poopyman
No leis? Wouldn’t be a prom without ’em.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Mike E: GOS is not a good reason to not be a Democrat any more than Newt Gingrich is a good reason to not be a Christian. The party consists of more people than just those on Daily Kos.
Poopyman
@the Conster: His date is the hotter of the two, as well.
gnomedad
He’s the only one not holding a drink! You know who else didn’t drink?
Suffern ACE
@Goblue72: That ain’t no blonde!
Punchy
I believe the leaves on those leis are the species Orlius Taitzutus, grown exclusively in Kenya.
kindness
You know the commentary we are going to see today? I’ll give you a clue – Blazing Saddles:
‘Where all the white women at?’
I won’t go to those sites but I will go over to LGF at some point because he will certainly give us the Cliff Notes of the neanderthals.
Citizen_X
Is that a denim tie he’s wearing? INPEACH!
Face
It’s probably very difficult to find a high-school girl who’s willing to go in that orifice.
Wag
@Redshirt:
Both!
MomSense
@gelfling545:
Wait for it, but I predict the scandal will be his yearbook message to his best friend’s girl where he calls her “foxy” and offers to take her out to lunch while her boyfriend (his best friend) was away!
geg6
Heh. I graduated a couple of years before the pres and there is no way on earth I ever want any of my prom/Christmas formal photos to be seen in public. Of course, the clothing in mine is much more embarrassing and goes back to 1974 and 1975 (my boyfriend was two years ahead of me) in addition to my junior and senior years (’76 and ’77, respectively). In one of them (I think it was ’74, my boyfriend’s junior year), I had a strapless gown of black crushed velvet with a huge feather kind of thing on the chest. I wore big cuff bracelets and platform sandals. I was the epitome of awful ’70s fashion. I was trying to channel Cher in her Half-breed and Dark Lady phase.
Marc
I see Obama sought an alliance with House Targaryen.
Patricia Kayden
@the Conster: Your comment wins.
eemom
goddAMN he was cute. Just look at that smile.
[melt]
jibeaux
I liked the yearbook inscription to Greg’s date. TOTALLY macking on her. (Do the kids still say macking on?)
JPL
OT.. Home Depot has red 5 burner Brinkmann grills for 99.00 in the store.. Each store only got a few but I bought one cuz I’m a sucker .. link
It will probably sit in the garage cuz I love my Weber kettle grill which uses charcoal.
eric
Why are we just learning about this AFTER the election? Look carefully at the photo. Those door jams are in the style used almost exclusively in colonial africa in the late 60s. my friend is a builder from the congo and that was the first thing he noticed. You libs will never learn: your hero is a fraud.
Patricia Kayden
@eemom: Yes he was. And still is.
SatanicPanic
Damn that dude was cool
Mnemosyne
@gnomedad:
That’s always been one of my theories, which I expounded again the other day, so I won’t go into the entire rant all over again. But he did very clearly make a conscious decision to live his adult life as a black man by moving to a city with a powerful black mayor, marrying a black woman, and joining a black church, and that rejection of white culture is something that certain right-wingers just cannot accept.
Forum Transmitted Disease
The kerning is all wrong on this, obvious forgery except for the part where’s he’s raping the white women. That’s totally legit.
If nothing else, the Obama years sure have been a wakeup for me regarding racism. Laugh at my naiveté, but pre-2008 I didn’t think it was really that big a deal in this country any more. Oh, I’ve made some mistakes in my life and held some stupid beliefs, but that one takes the cake. This country fucking hates black people.
jibeaux
@JPL: Whoa. Thanks. My grill is beat and rusted all to hell. Hey, can I have yours?
Cris (without an H)
Khal Barack
Svensker
@eric:
Also, as commenters over at Time point out, WHERE ARE THE PICTURES OF OBUMMER AT COLUMBIA! Huh? Well, where are they? ! ? !
Betty Cracker
@JPL: Man, that’s tempting. I am also a Weber fan, but my poor grill is falling apart, and I’ve heard nothing but praise for Brinkmann from people whose BBQ chops I greatly respect. Hmmm.
Emily
Nobody’s mentioned Obama’s black shirt yet. Don’t you know it’s a sure sign of a thugocrat.
Comrade Jake
Something tells me Barry was a heckofa lot cooler than Barack.
peach flavored shampoo
It does not appear that Obama’s date is wearing a bra. Easier access, natch. Will Issa investigate?
MomSense
@Betty Cracker:
Love mine–bought it at ridiculous sale price because it had a random and not that noticeable dent. Food pretty much rules our house.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m gonna go with the third option: Both. Ron Fournier, Howard Feinman, and as near as anyone can tell in column choked with references to The Americans, the reappearance of 24 and… is Gossip Girl still on TV? if not, that HBO vampire show, Maureen Dowd.
MomSense
I am starting to suspect this is not a prom photo at all -no tuxedos! This is all part of a nefarious plot to plant shoeboxes full of fake photographic “proof” that Barry Soetoro was ever in Hawaii.
gnomedad
@Mnemosyne: Exactly.
JD Rhoades
@Cacti:
It’s amazing how one man can be so many entirely contradictory things at the same time.
Don’t forget, he’s also an evil genius who’s too dumb to speak without a teleprompter.
Mnemosyne
@Comrade Jake:
Barack is a married man in his 50s with two kids. Sorry, fellas, but no one in that demographic is cool.
Villago Delenda Est
@gelfling545:
“Where are the white wimmen at?”
Villago Delenda Est
@eric:
You really need to work on your spelling. As in fucking it up.
Hill Dweller
@Comrade Jake: I suspect the private Barack isn’t all that different from “Barry”.
Earlier this week there was a lot of talk about Obama saying he was going to go “Bulworth” because he felt so confined by the Presidency. Everything a President says is picked apart, which tends to make them very cautious when speaking publicly.
Shakezula
I’ve had a headache all morning. I now see it is caused by the high pitched squeals from bigots.
Once they calm down they’ll tell us that Obama must be a racist because he
dared to place his filthy hands on a fairtook a blonde girl to the prom. (Assuming she went voluntarily. Doesn’t she look rather uncomfortable? WHERE IS SHE NOW???)Awesome.
eric
@Villago Delenda Est: dood that is sew knot cul
belieber
@Forum Transmitted Disease: Nah, you are just seeing the death throes of Racism. A very vocal minority who grew up with segregation and are are literally in their death throes.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@belieber: Errr, no. What the hell would you know? You live in Canada, for Chrissakes. DERF.
Villago Delenda Est
@eric:
Wrong (rong) way with the misspellings. Hipster is NOT the Rethug way.
Keith
@gelfling545: Maybe…one of the comments on Time’s site said that since they were drinking champagne at age 17, it must be a crime and therefore possibly impeachable? I hope it was sarcasm, but these days, that kind of thing can actually get a serious following.
Villago Delenda Est
Is it me or does the white dude look a lot like Ashton Kutcher? If that is the case, is the brunette then Mila Kunis?
mai naem
@Comrade Jake: I think Barry is a lot cooler than Barack but Barack is the president and Barry is the private non-president. I can’t see Biden getting along with Barack so he must be seeing the Barry and not the Barack.
Kind of OT – when I googled the Time pics this website comes up
http://www.thefogbow.com/disembodied/friends
You have a freaking website devoted to disproving the birther crap. I mean a serious professional website – not some amateurish piece of crap. Pathetic that we needed this.
raven
I want data. . . proof!!!!!!
AladinsLamp
The after party was at Bill Ayers house.
Can anyone make out the inscription on his ring?
Mike E
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): It wasn’t Daily Kos that did it–I still lurk there and find some value in their existence. It was Big Dog’s ascendency through coopting Repub planks, steering my beloved Dem party away from its core. I love Clinton, he’s the greatest politician of my lifetime; but he gave cover to neolib posers who know how to work all sides to the “middle”. No thanks!
WereBear
I have NEVER understood this line of thinking. I’ve had friends with lighter skin tones than the President, and they never got the “option” of passing for white.
This isn’t decided by the person, but by the society! Sheesh.
khead
50 bucks says the white kid picks his nose.
Rafer Janders
@Mnemosyne:
But he did very clearly make a conscious decision to live his adult life as a black man
Also, too, the fact that he is a black man might have made that decision for him. Whether or not Obama ever made “a conscious decision” for himself, the rest of American society was always going to treat him as a black man.
And, y’know, if he’d moved to, say, Greenwich and married a white woman, would he be any less of a black man?
mai naem
@Mike E: Don’t want to get into a firebagger/obot/puma discussion and I have huge problems with stuff that Clinton did(Glass/Steagal) but I think Clinton started to get the pendulum swinging back and that’s about all he could do. Monica cost him time to swing it back some more but I’m not sure he could have been a liberal at that time. I vacillate on Obama. I think Obama missed an opportunity in 09 to really swing the pendulum back quite a bit when everything was falling apart. His own party in the Senate,however, didn’t want to help him.
Redshirt
Choom Gang! ASSEMBLE!
Ben Cisco
Wonder what would happen if President Obama could go back to Barry at the prom (sorta like the Blake Griffin Kia commercials).
What would he say?
What advice would he give?
MomSense
@Keith:
And they can tell the difference between champagne and ginger ale in a 30 year old picture.
Frankensteinbeck
I do not think this photo will get any wingnut bitching except where they think they’re not being watched. They know that being seen objecting to a black man dating a white woman is punished by society as overt racism, and will prove they’re not racist by not doing so. Most likely they’ll avoid the photo entirely unless they feel very safe.
belieber
@Forum Transmitted Disease: Yummy hostility. What would you know, living in Murica.
I lived there for many years btw but that’s besides my point which is gfys.
gnomedad
@WereBear:
I’m referring to the perception on the right, not the reality. Obama had a chance to be someone they approve of, like Clarence Thomas, Allen West, Herman Cain …
Central Planning
@BGinCHI:
I think kids today still think they’re virgins when it happens like that.
Mike E
@mai naem: I’d add to the list: Obama’s insistence in treating the GOP as a legitimate political party in ’09, instead of snapping their pathetic necks and forcing them to wander in the proverbial desert for 40 years as payment for deliberately sabotaging every institution they ever laid their hands on. Also.
Stand-outs like Clinton and Obama are rare and can’t be faulted for not single-handedly righting a irreparably rigged game. That’s at the party level, and we proles gotta make that happen, if that’s even possible. Too.
Elaine Benis
My high school graduation present, circa 1978, was a trip to Waikiki. We spent every night in bars and clubs getting tanked.
The legal drinking age in Hawaii at that time was 18.
Mnemosyne
@WereBear:
It’s not really that people can “pass” for white, but that they accept that white standards are superior and measure their “success” by those standards (ie marry a white woman, go to work for white-dominated industries or companies), so they receive a certain measure of acceptance from conservatives for that deference. I think the example I used the other day was Clarence Thomas, who made it to Supreme Court Justice by conforming to those white standards.
Obama rejected the white standard of success and used African-American political operatives like Valerie Jarrett to get into office rather than waiting for white politicians to approve him. He basically showed that a minority politician can bypass the white power structure and that’s what’s unforgivable.
@Rafer Janders:
To certain people, he would be a more acceptable black man, because he would be living his life in a way that “proves” the white standard is better and white people are right when they lecture black people about how they need to act in order to be successful.
Obama became president by bypassing the white political power brokers and white political establishment, and that’s what a lot of them can’t accept. That’s why so many white Democratic operatives and politicians take so many opportunities to stab him in the back while promoting “acceptable” black politicians like Harold Ford.
Mnemosyne
@Rafer Janders:
Also, if you read Dreams from My Father, it’s very clear that Obama struggled with his identity and made a conscious choice to move to Chicago where there was a powerful black political establishment that he could become a part of. He could have stayed on the East Coast and made the kinds of choices that Harold Ford did, or he could have gone back to Hawaii, which is probably the most multicultural state in the union, but that’s not what he did. He specifically chose a city where there was already a strong black political establishment that he could learn from.
gogol's wife
@eemom:
You should see it in person, even now (or I should say recently). He made me go weak in the knees, and I’m no schoolgirl.
gogol's wife
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
I am coming to the same conclusion. And it’s the “sophisticates” at the NYTimes who really scare me.
Mnemosyne
@belieber:
Ah, yes, the old “I once lived in the US, so I totally understand America and its politics better than Americans do!” Andrew Sullivan is under the same illusion.
There was only one Alexis de Tocqueville and, dude, you ain’t him.
Violet
Thanks for the update. Glad it’s getting better when the news changes.
Violet
@Violet: Posted to wrong thread and FYWP won’t let me edit.
quannlace
@gelfling545:
He’s got his arm around a white chick. Heads at Fox Nation are x-ploding!
Shakezula
@gogol’s wife: Oh. Just. Just shut up. [sulk]
Villago Delenda Est
@AladinsLamp:
“One ring to rule them all, One ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them”
Jeremy
The guy on the left Greg Orme was a fellow basketball player on their high school team and a close friend. He was at Grant Park during the 2008 election celebration and he has been seen along with other friends of Obama in Hawaii during the Obama’s annual Hawaii vacations.
gogol's wife
@Shakezula:
It’s okay. It lasted about 3 nanoseconds. (But I did also see Reggie Love up close. Nyah, nyah.)
MomSense
@Villago Delenda Est:
You made me do a spittake at work!
AHH onna Droid
@belieber: That may be a joke, but it just makes me feel sick.
Why do these white guys push these white women rape jokes? Because they saw the feminists and abolitionists join forces briefly in the late 19th century and it scared them spitless.
Ash Can
That photo is absolutely adorable. What a cute group.
@Jeremy: And that’s sweet too. Nice little story.
Patricia Kayden
@mai naem: Shaking my head at that link. Wow. Shame that something like that is even needed. But must give whoever runs it two thumbs way up.
Rafer Janders
@Mnemosyne:
He went to Harvard Law School, taught constitutional law as an adjunct professor at the University of Chicago, got elected to the Illinois State Legislature, and then became a US Senator. I don’t know how that’s exactly rejecting “white” standards of success.
Patricia Kayden
@Villago Delenda Est: Hilarious!! LOL.
mdblanche
@gnomedad: They may think that, but they won’t admit it in public.
Fixed that for you. Seriously, not 15 minutes ago I had an to listen to an older relative angry about how the President dared to once date a white woman. “People still angry with the godless liberal Supreme Court for Loving v Virginia” is as good a definition for a Republican as any these days. Remind me again why I should give a damn about how prosecuting their moles for passing classified information to their propagandists is supposed to be some sort of violation of freedom of the press.
Juju
@Punchy: @gnomedad: The president’s birthday is in August. He wasn’t 18 yet. He couldn’t legally have a drink at prom time. The president and I are nearly the same age. He is 13 days older than I, and I could not legally drink at any after or before prom functions.
Mnemosyne
@Rafer Janders:
Because he built his power in black neighborhoods using black political operatives. You do know who Valerie Jarrett is and why so many white Democratic operatives hate her, right?
That’s the whole point — he met those standards of success by going around the white political system. Do you really not know what kind of people live in Kenwood? Hint: they are mostly wealthy, but very few of them would pass a paper bag test.
gocart mozart
@gelfling545:
Go to the Gawker comments.
1. “Is that an engagement ring on his dates finger!!!!”
2. “Underage drinking !!eleventy!” The dinking age was 18 but ex post facto shut up!
gocart mozart
The “dinking” age was probably 16, the drinking age was 18.
ruemara
@Villago Delenda Est: win
jefft452
“My husband is only a bit younger than the president, and the suit he wore to the prom once prompted someone who saw his prom photo to laugh and ask if it was a Halloween costume”
I’m a little bit older then the president, and I’ve had the same experience
MCA1
@Villago Delenda Est: Agreed. Eric’s note was spot-on in substance and tone, but he needed to work in a way to use “loose” for “lose” somewhere in there, or perhaps use “dominate” as an adjective, then just straight up misspell some words, dispense with the punctuation, and use Zaire in place of Congo.
fuckwit
@Poopyman: Damn straight. I would certainly like to know who she is, and if she still looks that good now. Very intriguing.