Barack Obama Under The Microscope: 5 of His Shadier Sides

Some Less Admirable Aspects of Obama

Roughly 45 percent of Americans recalled Barack Obama as being 'above average' or 'outstanding', according to the Pew Research Centre, when he departed the Oval Office. According to the think tank, 65% of people in the 40 nations surveyed still have faith in him, so it seems like he's well-respected globally as well. Although Obama has maintained a mostly pristine public image, it does not absolve him of any wrongdoing. There were several questionable things that the former president did, particularly when he was younger. Here are some of the less savory aspects of Obama that you may be unaware of, ranging from gossip about him from schoolyards to accusations of questionable infidelity.

1.  Obama Used Homophobic Slurs

In his book, A Promised Land the former president made this remark. His 'attitudes toward gays, lesbians, and transgender people hadn't always been particularly enlightened' in the years leading up to his political career, but he was forthright about how his LGBTQ views have evolved in the book. As reported by LGBTQ Nation, Obama recalled, "I grew up in the 70s, a time when LGBTQ life was far less visible to those outside the community, so that [Obama's grandmother] Toot's sister (and one of my favorite relatives), Aunt Arlene, felt obliged to introduce her partner of 20 years as 'my close friend Marge' whenever she visited us in Hawaii." He mentioned that he and his acquaintances 'sometimes threw around words like 'f*g' or 'gay' at each other as casual put-downs'.

2. Obama Admitted To Having Experimented With Drugs

Obama experimented with a variety of illegal narcotics when he was younger, in addition to his smoking habits. Although he was ashamed of his actions, he did confess to using cocaine and marijuana while in college. As reported by the New York Times, Obama discussed 'getting high' and smoked 'reefer' in 'the dorm room of some brother' in his book from 1995. His use of marijuana, alcohol, and cocaine was described in the book as prevalent throughout his time as a high school student in Hawaii, before his time at Occidental. When he was younger, he experimented with drugs and alcohol and made 'some bad decisions.'

3. Obama Engaged in Violent Altercations

On his new podcast with Bruce Springsteen in 2021, Obama finally spoke up his feud with a middle school classmate. As reported by The New York Post, Obama said on Spotify’s Renegades: Born in the USA, "Listen, when I was in school, I had a friend. We played basketball together. And one time we got into a fight and he called me a c—n. Now first of all, ain’t no c–ns in Hawaii, right? It’s one of those things that — where he might not even known what a c–n was — what he knew was, ‘I can hurt you by saying this'. I remember I popped him in the face and broke his nose ... It was just reactive. I said, 'What?!' and I popped him. He was like, 'Why'd you do that?' and I explained to him, I said, 'Don't you ever call me something like that.'"

4. Although Barack Was Dating Michelle, He Maintained Contact With His Ex-Girlfriend

Despite meeting his future first wife, Michelle Obama, facts in Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama suggest that a young Obama may have maintained contact with his ex-girlfriend Sheila Miyoshi Jager. As reported by People, David J. Garrow mentioned in the book, "Barack and Sheila had continued to see each other irregularly throughout the 1990-1991 academic year, notwithstanding the deepening of Barack’s relationship with Michelle Robinson. ‘I always felt bad about it,’ Sheila confessed more than two decades later."

5. Obama Was Involved in a Scandal Involving Infidelity

If Christopher Andersen's Barack and Michelle: The Love Story is to be believed, Michelle Obama allegedly plotted to have Vera Baker fired from Obama's presidential campaign team because she was unhappy with her husband's cordial treatment of Baker. As reported by Page Six, Anderson wrote, "Her husband, it would later be reported, had grown close to an attractive young African-American woman [working for the Obama campaign] named Vera Baker. When Baker suddenly and inexplicably vanished from the campaign and resurfaced on the Caribbean island of Martinique, tongues reportedly began wagging. A jealous Michelle, it was suggested, had engineered Baker’s departure."