Why is Fox Nation so obsessed with President Obama’s college girlfriends, and particularly their race?

The article referenced above links to an item in the British newspaper, the Daily Mail. It discusses excerpts from a biography of Obama by David Marannis. And while it never answers the question in the headline, it does assert unsupported allegations of racial motivations in his love life.

“The U.S. president and his First Lady sometimes seem so well-suited to each other that it’s hard to imagine there ever having been any woman in his life other than the formidable Michelle, whom he met while working for a Chicago law firm in 1989. Obama has reinforced this notion by making only fleeting mention of ex-girlfriends in his carefully calibrated memoirs.” […]

“Time and again, Obama, who has had to fight hard to convince other African Americans of his ‘black credibility’, appears to have burnished his radical credentials, not least by playing up the roles of black people in his life and playing down the roles of the white. And nowhere is this more apparent than in his romantic life.”

Suggestive phrases like “fleeting mention” are designed to insinuate that there is something sinister and secretive in Obama’s past. But how many of George Bush’s old flames can you recall? And were any of them black? More importantly, when have you ever heard anyone even ask about the former girlfriends of any president prior to Obama? It seems that only Obama’s romantic history is of interest to these folks. Just like Obama is the only president ever asked to produce a birth certificate.

Why are these matters of significance with regard to Obama and no one else? Isn’t anyone curious about who Romney courted before hooking up with Ann? Surely he had a fling or two while he lived in Paris proselytizing for the Mormon Church and avoiding military service in Vietnam.

There is very little in the Daily Mail article that is new, and much of it was revealed by Obama himself in his own autobiography, Dreams From My Father. However, this fixation on the youthful romances of Obama is a recurring theme with right-wing racists. The fetish extends to authors on Breitbart News and NewsBusters, along with numerous other conservative bile dispensers. Last year Fox Nation posted this thinly disguised racial attack on Obama.

There seems to be a recurring theme that involves the old fear that white racists have of virile African men defiling their pure Caucasian virgins. And the Fox Nationalists never seem to get tired of invoking it. Similarly, I never get tired of posting this: