MSNBC trashes 'Dreams' documentary on Obama

MSNBC's Alex Wagner on her "Now" show today bashed Joel Gilbert's documentary "Dreams from My Real Father," which posits that Barack Obama's real father was not the Kenyan goatherder, but Frank Marshall Davis, a communist party activist.

It came as part of a segment where she recognized that Dinesh D'Souza's film "2016," a hit documentary on Obama's life and cultural influences, is No. 5 on the list of highest grossing documentaries,

The "Dreams" project explains the evidence behind the claim that Obama's father was not the Kenyan student, as he has written, but Davis.

MSNBC archived on its website the segment that the network characterized as: "What NOW?! Why some anti-Obama ads aren't a joking matter."

Showing the full-page advertisement Gilbert ran in last week's New York Post, Wagner correctly pointed out that Gilbert argues in the documentary that Davis, the radical poet and journalist who was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party of the USA, was the real, biological and ideological father of Obama, not Barack Obama, the Kenyan, who came from Africa in 1959 to attend the University of Hawaii in Honolulu.

New York Post: “Dreams from My Real Father,” Full-Page Ad, scheduled to appear in New York Post

Wagner introduced discussion of Gilbert's video in racial terms, by showing on the screen a copy of the New York Post ad and claiming Gilbert was "othering" Obama, presenting him as of outside mainstream America in terms of his nativity story.

Then panelist Wes Moore jumped in to argue that Obama would ignore Gilbert's claim much as Moore claims Obama has sought to minimize challenges that the long-form birth certificate the White House presented the nation on April 27, 2011, is a forgery.

He argued that a lot of "good, qualified, smart people" would be discouraged from going into public office because of the scrutiny Barack Obama has received regarding his nativity story and his life narrative.

"Vilifying public servants and public service in general doesn't make anyone eager to run for public office," Wagner agreed, joining in with Moore’s characterization of Gilbert's documentary as less than factually based.

"The panelists biggest fear appeared to be that people like Obama might not want to run for office if the stories they tell about their origins and life are subject to scrutiny and are exposed," Gilbert told WND.

"I think this is a good thing. The only people who should run for office are those who tell the truth about who they are. Obama has failed to do this."

In running the segment, MSNBC had a graphic on the screen that read, "Born-Again Birthers."

Gilbert objected to this as well.

"This is a clever attempt by MSNBC to dismiss legitimate research into President Obama's official nativity story by demeaning the effort as yet another 'birther' quest," Gilbert commented. "By throwing in 'born-again,' MSNBC tried to slip in the insinuation that my documentary is an extremist hatchet job when in fact the film is based on two years of research."

Gilbert noted that so far MSNBC is the only television news outlet to report on his documentary, even if the report was intended to demean the film.

"I ran the ad in the New York Post to provoke interest in the public and the media, but ironically only MSNBC had the courage – if you want to call it that – to report on the provocative ad," Gilbert said.

"The only time Fox News has mentioned 'Dreams from My Real Father' is when Megan Kelly announced it as part of a film festival taking place in Tampa, Fla., during the Republican National Convention. Hannity has not called, but he has my phone number."

A Communist Party mentor

"Barack Obama sold himself to America as the multicultural ideal, a man who stood above politics," he explained. "His father was a goatherder from Kenya, so Barack Obama would bring people together, so the story went.

"However, as I show in the documentary, the truth is Barack Obama has a deeply disturbing family background, including a father who was a propagandist for the Communist Party USA – a fact Obama has intentionally hidden in order to obscure his Marxist political foundations."

Gilbert acknowledges voters are willing to overlook many faults a politician may have.

"However, providing a false family background to hide a Marxist political agenda is irreconcilable with American values and a totally unacceptable manipulation of the electorate," Gilbert stressed.

Gerald Horne, a contributing editor to Public Affairs, an openly Marxist political review, made the first positive identification of "Frank" mentioned in Obama's book with Frank Marshall Davis.

In March 2007, Horne gave a speech at New York University on the occasion of the Communist Party USA archive being placed at a NYU library.

In that speech, Horne discussed Frank Marshall Davis, noting that Davis, who born in Kansas and lived much of his adult life in Chicago, had moved to Honolulu in 1948, at the suggestion of his good friend, actor Paul Robeson. In the 1940s, Robeson was an outspoken critic of segregation and racial discrimination in the United States and was also a strong advocate of the Soviet Union and a member of the Communist Party USA.

Horne also documented Davis' friendship with the Dunham family in Hawaii.

"Eventually, he [Frank Marshall Davis] befriended another family – a Euro-American family – that had migrated to Honolulu from Kansas and a young woman from this family eventually had a child with a young student from Kenya East Africa who goes by the name of Barack Obama, who retracing the steps of Davis eventually decamped to Chicago."

Lorne further documented Frank Marshall Davis was "a decisive influence in helping him [Barack Obama] to find his present identity as an African-American, a people who have been the least anti-communist and the most left-leaning of any constituency in this nation."

After Horne's speech, the identity of "Frank" never was in doubt, nor his importance in the development of the young Barack Obama.

On December 5, 1956, Frank Marshall Davis appeared in executive session before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee investigating "the scope of Soviet activity in the United States," one of the McCarthy-era committees seeking to expose communists considered to be a security threat.

Invoking his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination, Davis refused to answer a direct question asking if he was then a communist.

A year earlier, in 1955, a Commission on Subversive Activities organized by the government of the Territory of Hawaii identified Davis as a member of the Communist Party USA; the committee singled out for criticism several articles Frank Marshall Davis published in the "Communist Honolulu Record" that were critical of the commission.

Joel Gilbert's DVD "Dreams from My Real Father" is available in the WND Superstore.

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