Does President Barack Obama’s office ever do background checks? First he attempted to promote tax cheats to the highest government positions in the U.S.  Then yesterday he visited Canada and promoted our highest ranking sexual harassment apologist: The first person Obama arranged to shake hands with after stepping off Airforce One onto the Ottawa airport tarmac was Governor General Michaelle Jean. He provided Jean with a world wide photo op.  Then he invited her to visit him in Washington, an invitation he did not extend to the Prime Minister.                                                                                                                                                                Here’s what a quick Google search of Jean by Obama’s handlers would have turned up. Last year Jean gave the Order of Canada, Canada’s highest honor, to Vancouver photographer Jeff Wall, despite allegations that he operated a sexual harassment ring while head of the Visual Arts Department at Simon Fraser University.  A former Visual Arts student who did not have sexual relations with professors in the ring but calls Wall “the crotch watcher”, says her life was severely damaged by dropping out of university when targeted by the ring. She says she “couldn’t concentrate” after years of being encouraged to act as a sexual service provider for male professors tired of their spouses.  A Dance student who did have sexual relations with Wall at his family home, reportedly moved to Toronto in an attempt to get over him when he wouldn’t divorce his wife.                                                                                                                                                                                                   Jean announced several weeks ago that the election of Barack Obama as President of the U.S was “symbolic”.   That symbolism was compounded yesterday as Jean, Canada’s first Black Governor General, greeted Obama on his first official visit to Canada.  And then Obama, when leaving Ottawa several hours later, gave a nod to Canada’s national symbol by stopping at the Byward market to buy a beaver tail.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                janefromvancouver blogs at the Downtown Eastside Enquirer