Like a Little Crack Cocaine in Your White House Pastry?

Most of us  have heard that on June 30, 2014 while hosting a reception celebrating Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender (LGBT) Pride Month, Barack commented about his White House pastry chef’s delectable goodies saying "I don't know what he does—whether he puts crack in them"  whereupon the crowd exploded in uproarious laughter to hear the swaggering, most excellently with-it president being  “very cool.”  Barack had so tickled the nation’s funny bone, in fact, that award-winning CNN journalist John King later gushed, “They must be pretty good though I think I want one of those pies!” to which Kate Bolduan CNN co-host of New Day chortled, “I want a piece of that pie too John that’s for sure!”

The President is just so clever that I can understand why Chris Matthews famously announced that when Barack spoke it sent shivers up his leg.  Still, I must admit that I had wondered where the “the most intelligent man ever to become president” (presidential historian Michael Beschloss, November 11, 2008) gets his material.  Now I know the obvious answer: he draws both upon his history and current perspective on life.

In Dreams from My Father Barack Obama recounted his marijuana and cocaine abuse, rationalizing that the problems issued from his conflicted racial identity.  Poor soul.  As Michael Medved (ABC News, 2005) observed, “Obama's drug confessions only add to the sense that he's a radically different sort of candidate -- and it's hard to see how the confessions will work against him.”  Medved, of course, was right on target with that.  As we have learned repeatedly, nothing seems to dampen the enthusiasm for our identity-challenged biracial president who thinks he is all black.

Surely Barack Obama’s leadership skills also account in part for his success.  David Maraniss in Barack Obama: The Story explains that the then-youthful Barry Obama was a drug-abusing innovator responsible for his Choom [choom is marijuana] Gang’s creative pot-smoking antics.  Mentioned were: “Total Absorption” (when a gang member exhaled marijuana too quickly he had to skip his next drag);   “Roof Hits” (closing all the windows in the car used for marijuana smoking to maximize the high); and “Interceptions” (Obama’s tendency to take an extra “hit” by grabbing the joint from the person next in line to smoke it himself).

Perhaps I’m being too harsh on Mr. Obama.  After all, he cares deeply about the welfare of crack users.  For many years, Barack and Attorney General Holder had been in favor of drug leniency: “Holder’s urging is the latest in the Obama administration's retrenchment on the war on drugs and crack-era mandatory minimum sentences that disproportionately impacted poor minorities [emphasis added] and non-violent offenders” (Trymaine Lee MSNBC, June 10, 2014). [Note that in 2010 the Obama Administration successfully fought to reduce the disparity between prison sentences for the more dangerous and more black-abused crack cocaine versus the less dangerous and more white-abused powdered cocaine from 100:1 to 18:1 and in December, 2013 Barack pardoned eight crack-abusing federal inmates, six of whom had been sentenced to life in prison.]

As Gomer Pyle might say, “Well, surprise, surprise," Barack Obama has a race-based affection for crack cocaine because of his history and current mindset by which he confounds crack with racism.  Who would have guessed?  Perhaps Obama’s crack pastry joke is just the most intelligent president of all time wink-winking at American youth, especially poor black youth, letting them know that he understands their cravings and won’t be too hard on them since he shares the cravings too.