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Ringers

13 Comments Posted by on 10/04/2012

At The New Yorker, Margot Mifflin provides some photos of Barack Obama from his days at Occidental College.  Mifflin ran in the same circles as Obama.  Here is one picture of Obama taken in the school library:

Courtesy, The New Yorker. Photo taken by Tom Grauman.

I don’t consider my self a Birther.  But perhaps I’m a Ringer.  What’s up with the wedding band?  I’ll entertain any explanation.  Was there a movement afoot at the time in which people wore wedding bands ironically as a critique of the “patriarchal” institution of marriage?  Was Obama legitimately married and then divorced, and was the experience so traumatic that he never mentioned it?  Or, was this a “green card marriage”?  If so, who was vying for the green card?

Addendum:  I was unaware that Jerome Corsi has covered this topic and has previously written on Obama’s wedding band at Occidental.

Addendum 2:  Commenter soren suggests Obama could have  been conducting a precursor to “The Costanza Experiment”.  It’s funny to think, Barack Obama:  PUA.

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13 Responses to Ringers

  1. soren 10/04/2012 at 10:11 am

    Maybe he was pretending to be married to attract women.

  2. C.R. 10/04/2012 at 10:12 am

    ah, the Costanza routine. very good thought. Obama: PUA?

  3. Heartiste 10/04/2012 at 10:49 am

    i have a friend who uses the phony wedding ring costanza routine. it works a depressingly frequent number of times. so props to O-face if that was his gig, however i don’t think such knowledge of his sly pickup past would go over well with the electorate or the First Linebacker.

  4. peterike 10/04/2012 at 10:59 am

    Perhaps it was a “love ring” with another man. Barry looks really gay in some of those photos from the Corsi article.

  6. C.R. 10/04/2012 at 11:11 am

    Corsi has really pushed that theory, but he’s used a lot of sketchy sourcing for the claim. To lend that more evidence, we’d have to see the ring finger of the roommate.

  7. bjk 10/04/2012 at 12:11 pm

    I’m more surprised that he was seen in the library.

  8. C.R. 10/04/2012 at 12:33 pm

    Obama was/is a reader. It’s not surprising at all that he was in the library. This might have made him a good policy guy operating behind the scenes, but it does not make him a good politician. He is a good politician only in the sense that he has a huge surrogate media which shines him up 24/7.

  9. HammerHead 10/04/2012 at 12:43 pm

    If he was legally married to someone, it seems like someone would have dug up evidence for it by now. Unless it was some kind of secret elopement with no announcements anywhere. But why would he keep it secret and then wear the ring? That’s what makes the “love ring” thing sort of plausible to me.

    bjk’s comment struck me, too. Why was that picture taken? This was before digital cameras, when cameras had actual film that had to be developed. People had to have a reason to take pictures, so what was this one for?

  10. C.R. 10/04/2012 at 12:49 pm

    HammerHead:

    there are other pictures in that series of people engaging in mundane activities, like talking or hanging out. i don’t think the content of the picture is significant. at the time, it was just a photo of a guy looking at books in the library. perhaps they were trying to capture his personality, which seems to have included bookishness. i don’t think there was a “purpose” to the photo other than college kids beefing themselves up to feel important and documenting their collegiate journey as some sort of world-changing endeavor.

  11. HammerHead 10/04/2012 at 12:59 pm

    C.R.

    That sounds about right. I wasn’t trying to suggest that there was any kind of nefarious purpose to it, and making yourself feel important is as good a reason as any. It just seemed weird to me. It looks posed, and he obviously knew there was a guy right next to him with a camera. I was just wondering if it was for some kind of newspaper article or photography class or what. I guess it doesn’t really matter, but it just struck me as a weird thing to take a picture of.

  12. C.R. 10/04/2012 at 1:15 pm

    I was reading an article from Newsweek in 2008 which focused on Obama’s life during his Occidental days. He was quite full of himself and wanted to change the world. Someone in the piece even said he was basically a poseur. That opinion does fit this picture. I can imagine Obama asking the photographer to catch him grabbing a book in that particular way. But then again, most guys (and girls) are show-offs at that point in life. It makes me think of my book collection here in my apartment. I’ll be honest and admit that part of my ownership of quite a few books which are prominently dispalyed in my apartment is to inform others (and remind myself) that I’m a reader. As if that’s socially valued or something.

  13. Pingback: Ringers Update « Gucci Little Piggy

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