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Say What?

Andrew: If Obama’s family were as colorful as Palin’s, you can bet the press would have been all over it. He has to be kidding.  I am guessing that one of the reasons why the press paid relatively little attention to Obama’s many siblings and his extended family in Kenya is that a) it wasn’t particularly relevant and […]

Andrew:

If Obama’s family were as colorful as Palin’s, you can bet the press would have been all over it.

He has to be kidding.  I am guessing that one of the reasons why the press paid relatively little attention to Obama’s many siblings and his extended family in Kenya is that a) it wasn’t particularly relevant and b) there was probably some concern that talking about his father’s four wives and Obama’s many half-siblings scattered around the world would seem strange and foreign to the public.  (How many people, aside from avid Dreams From My Father readers and political junkies, knew who Maya Soetero-Ng was until she stepped on the convention stage last week?)  That didn’t stop some columnists at the NYT from going overboard in their focus on his multinational family.  To some extent, the press did take some interest in Obama’s family history, but it was almost always on the terms that Obama had set out for them in his book and the many biographical references in his speeches, and when it wasn’t that it was done as more of an effort to suppress crazy Internet rumors about Obama’s religion.  However “colorful” Andrew thinks Palin’s family is, their story is fairly familiar and recognizable to most Americans.  Obama’s family as a whole obviously is not, which is why most of the media have avoided talking about it in much detail.

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