A closer look at Obama

The choices of the adults in his life shaped Barack Obama's early back-ground, but what about his own choices after childhood- Do they suggest he is the right choice at this time to be president of the United States and the most powerful man on Earth-

Here's the summary of the choices that were put upon him by others:

-He was born in Honolulu in 1961, where his mother and father had met in college. His mother had been raised in a Protestant Christian household, but Obama has described her adult life as a "lonely witness for secular humanism." His father had been raised a Muslim, but Obama says that, "by the time he met my mother he was a confirmed atheist, thinking religion to be so much superstition."

-His Kenyan father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., abandoned his Kansan mother, Ann Dunham, and they divorced after two years of marriage.

-In 1967, his mother's new husband, Indonesian Lolo Soetoro, had his student visa revoked and the family moved to Jakarta, Indonesia, where Barrack was enrolled and listed as a Muslim at a Muslim school in central Jakarta from 1968 to 1970 .

-Lolo Soetoro and Obama's mother divorced in the late 1970s, but by 1971, Barrack had already moved back to live with his maternal grandparents in Honolulu.

-His grandparents enrolled him in the elite private school, Punahou Academy, which a British news article describes as "a cradle of academic privilege" and he attended there from the time he was 10 until he left for college.

Barack, or "Barry" as he was then called, made some bad choices while he was at Punahou Academy.

"We've been told not to talk to reporters," confided John Cheever, a past graduate and current sociology teacher at Punahou Academy, to an investigative reporter. Still, an article from that discussion states: "The murk is more likely to be about drugs, including marijuana and cocaine, and slipping grades. An entry by Obama in the 1979 school paper, The Ohauan, includes a thank you to the 'Choom Gang.' 'Chooming' in Hawaii means smoking marijuana." 

"Rolling Stone" magazine in a laudatory article about Obama wrote that: "He drifted through some druggy teenage years - no apologies! - before emerging as a star at Harvard Law School."

Barack Obama's autobiography "Dreams From My Father" was published when he was 33, even before he ran for the Illinois state senate. In the book, Obama casually confirms his drug use, admitting that when he was younger, "pot helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though."

After spending the bulk of his childhood, college and law school in predominantly white settings, Barack choose to immerse himself in an Afro-centric community.

Although he had grown up essentially in a white and wealthy setting, he became a "community activist" in Chicago.

His choice of a church is Afro-centric. For more than 20 years, he has been an active member of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, which says on its Web site: "Our roots in the black religious experience and tradition are deep, lasting and permanent. We are an African people, and remain 'true to our native land,' the mother continent, the cradle of civilization." 

Racial pride is not only more important than national pride to Obama's church, it even takes precedent over their own stated Christian religion. The magazine published in-house by Obama's church (the pastor's daughters serve as its publisher and executive editor) gave Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, its 2007 "Trumpeter Award" because he was, Obama's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, said, a man who "truly epitomized greatness."

Obama did not have a choice about his parents, his name, his childhood travel, or his upbringing, but the choices he made as a youth, a young adult and even now, as a congregant of a church that most of us would deem to be bigoted, should cause the rest of us to wonder whether he is the right choice for America in 2008.

J. Michael Sharman is an independent columnist who practices law in Culpeper. His column appears Tuesday in the Star-Exponent.