AP Lies About Obama's Red Mentor
By Cliff Kincaid
August 5, 2008
Page 2 of 5
So "McCarthyism" has become telling the truth about communists? Why has Tidwell taken such a low-profile during the presidential campaign when he should have so much to offer about Davis―and possibly Obama? Why the silent treatment?
The Big Question
Not surprisingly, AP leaves many major questions unanswered. The wire service notes that Frank Marshall Davis is referred to in Obama's book Dreams From My Father "only as Frank."
But why? What does Obama have to say about this curious omission? Could it have something to do with the fact that, by the time Obama wrote his book, he knew that Davis was a Communist? And that he deliberately covered this up? Or did he know it earlier?
This is the key question: What did Obama know and when did he know it?
Why didn't AP ask this question? Was it afraid of the answer? Or did the campaign not want to comment?
There are more questions: Other than what was reported in Obama's book, and by Davis's friends and associates, what was the nature of the relationship between the two of them? Did Davis ever try to recruit Obama into the communist cause? Did Obama leave this out of his book, too?
AP does note that Davis was "an important influence" on Obama but doesn't mention Davis's communist views and how he took the Stalinist line before, during, and after World War II.
AP even uses the term "mentor," noting that Obama "struggled to find mentors in his search for a black identity." But the failure to mention that Davis was a Communist means that AP deliberately ignored the newsworthy significance of the relationship.
Davis "published several volumes of poetry," AP said, failing to note that they include poems praising the Soviet Red Army and mocking Christian missionaries.
Strange Silence
AP quotes John Edgar Tidwell in a book as saying about Davis, "He made his vision into a beacon, a light shedding understanding and enlightenment on the problems that denied people, regardless of race, national origin or economic status, their constitutional rights."
But AP doesn't quote Tidwell as confirming that Davis was a Communist, a member of a political party funded and controlled by Moscow. And AP doesn't note the evidence that Davis and his comrades tried to take over the NAACP in order to transform its Honolulu branch into a front for the Stalinist line.
What's more, AP doesn't note that Davis accused prominent black author Richard Wright of "treason" for breaking with and exposing the CPUSA.
"In spite of his writings," AP says, "Davis scholars dismiss the idea that he was anti-American."
Why not tell us what was in those writings? Like the private letter in the possession of Davis scholar Tidwell in which Davis tries to recruit a prominent poet to the CPUSA.
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