Tabloid update: "What Obama's hiding from America"

The cover of this week's Globe tabloid promises to reveal "What Obama's Hiding From America," plus "8 shocking secrets" that will "wreck" the new president, "insiders believe."

Inside, the magazine uses blood-red capital letters to declare, "OBAMA UNDER SIEGE."

Let's hear it!

Wanna hear it again?!

You heard right, there's nothing in the story.

The Globe poses eight questions for our new president to answer, and then answers them for him.

"Where were you really born?" the Globe asks. Ostensibly in Hawaii, the magazine reports, although many people, including Obama's paternal grandmother, believe he was born in Kenya. "Reports have circulated," the Globe says.

"What is your REAL name?" the tabloid demands to know, and "Are you secretly a Muslim?" The Globe says "insiders claim" he once took the name of his stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, when he was a child in school; and because his father and stepfather were Muslim, "That makes him a Muslim," according to "one source."

At this point, the Globe interrupts its make-believe interrogation of the president with a chirpy report about Dick Clark's health. Even they were bored with this stuff.

On page 34, the grilling resumes. "Why did you have your records at Columbia University SEALED?" the tabloid demands.

That's a good question, actually.

"Did you travel to trouble-torn Pakistan on an Indonesian passport at the age of 20?"

The Globe says some people believe this would call the president's citizenship into question. Maybe so, but America Wants To Know files it under "The least of our problems."

"Did you cheat on wife Michelle with both a man and a woman?"

The Globe quotes a guy named Larry Sinclair, described as "an ex-con from Duluth" who "failed a disputed lie-detector test about his allegations," saying he performed, um, an act on Barack Obama in the back seat of a limousine outside a bar in Chicago. Mr. Sinclair says this happened in 1999.

Of course it did.

The other cheating allegation involves "getting too close" to "gorgeous Vera Baker," an Obama fund-raiser who reportedly was exiled by our new first lady to the Caribbean island of Martinique. The Globe illustrates the story with an image of a newspaper clipping showing a photo of Ms. Baker wearing an ivory tank top. Her face is concealed with that digital block technique that's typically used to shield the faces of underage rape victims and anyone who refuses to sign a photo release.

However, this happened in 2004 and even the Globe only ranked it number six out of eight on their scandal list.

"When did you stop using drugs?"

The Globe uses seven paragraphs and a photo caption to tell us that President Obama quit using drugs when he was 18, unless you believe the ex-con from Duluth who failed a lie-detector test when he said there was cocaine in the back seat of that same limousine in 1999.

And finally, "Are you connected to the shooting death of Donald Young?

Donald Young was a choir director at Trinity United where Obama was once a member. Mr. Young was murdered on Christmas Eve, 2007, and the Globe says it has "at least one source" to confirm that he was shot because of "something he knew about Obama." The tabloid intones, "If Obama is really involved in a murder plot, he could wind up moving from the White House to the Big House."

They need new writers.

Much more interesting is the report on page 5 that Laura Bush has had plastic surgery and now looks "years younger" than she did as recently as June, 2008. "Her skin 'looks much smoother and more vibrant,'" according to Dr. Steve Pearlman, "Manhattan facial plastic surgeon and past president of the American Academy of Facial Plastic Surgeons." Dr. Pearlman speculates, based on photographs, that Mrs. Bush may have had a full facial chemical peel, a brow lift, an eyelid lift and a lower face lift.

You can tell right away that they don't teach Photoshop in medical school.

However, it does look like the Globe may have been right about Mrs. Bush's secret separation from her husband. Our former president admitted that his wife bought that house in Dallas without his ever setting foot in it or even seeing it. She showed him pictures, she told Larry King, after she closed the deal. On Saturday Mrs. Bush went to the house on Daria Place to check on renovations that are underway. She had some people with her. Her husband was not one of them.

Maybe we'll find out the truth one day, because Mrs. Bush says she plans to write a book, as does the former president, as does former Secretary of State and rumored presidential love interest Condoleezza Rice, who has inexplicably signed with the William Morris Agency.

She must have fallen for that line that they can get her into movies.

Let's hope our next peace negotiator is less gullible.


Copyright 2009

Editor's note: Catch up on your tabloid reading with "Laura Gets $15m divorce deal" and "Where Obama was really born."

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