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| Home Front: Politix |
| The angry Obama? |
| 2008-04-10 |
| Reading Dreams From My Father, Part Ten Jim Geraghty, "Campaign Spot" @ National Review . . . I'm formulating a theory about Barack Obama. (It's entirely possible that I'm off base on this, or that I'm projecting my reactions to his experiences onto him.) I'm wondering if despite his exceedingly cool, calm, pleasant demeanor, Obama is a much angrier guy than he lets on. Not swearing at colleagues and blowing-off-steam angry (as John McCain reputedly is), but that he's driven by a quiet, white-hot, continually burning anger, seeing great injustice everywhere, and compelling him to accumulate more and more power to set things right as only he can. And I suspect that anger is driven by Obama's feeling of betrayal by his father. I'm up to page 178 of this book, and while the reader has been told that Obama's father departed shortly after he was born, we've gotten only the most fleeting explanation as to why. We've heard of his father's death, his father's visit when Obama is a boy, letters the two exchanged, a few stories Obama was told of how his father acted as a young man... but so far, this book is constructed as a mystery: Why did Barack Hussein Obama Sr. leave? And why did he only return to his son once, for a few weeks? (Is it possible I'm projecting? Sure. I became a new dad in September, and I'm loving it. I can't imagine voluntarily leaving my boy and moving off to another continent and not seeing him for a decade and change.) Anyway, I thought of that theory when Obama interviews for his position as a community organizer: I sat down and told him a little bit about myself. |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #1 fits with another article I read awhile back: Link: Obama's Abaondonment In his best-selling autobiography, "Dreams from My Father," Obama describes having heated conversations about racism with another black student, "Ray." The real Ray, Keith Kakugawa, is half black and half Japanese. In an interview with the Tribune on Saturday, Kakugawa said he always considered himself mixed race, like so many of his friends in Hawaii, and was not an angry young black man. He said he does recall long, soulful talks with the young Obama and that his friend confided his longing and loneliness. But those talks, Kakugawa said, were not about race. "Not even close," he said, adding that Obama was dealing with "some inner turmoil" in those days. "But it wasn't a race thing," he said. "Barry's biggest struggles then were missing his parents. His biggest struggles were his feelings of abandonment. The idea that his biggest struggle was race is [bull]." |
| Posted by: Woodrow Slusorong7967 2008-04-10 12:59 |