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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.
Filed under: politics
I agree. Andrew informs a lot of my thinking, and I’ve read him daily for close to 10 years. However, he has lost perspective on this.
First, the family drama is totally irrelevant to her preparedness to lead the free world. At some point, decency and class have to take precedence over daily news-cycle ascendancy and profit.
Second, some of this happened to Obama, and it was less in your face because it did not happen over the course of a few days, but several months. Most of the attacks were focused on Michelle, and not his kids. Still, two wrongs do not make a right.
Besides, intrusive smear-mongering and blatant sexism just gives them fodder. Also, it’s embarrassing/hypocritical for everyone involved.
Riiiight. Tell me you are just pretending not to understand.
We are not talking about her siblings or parents or the parents of the “First Dude” of Alaska. If, for example, Sasha Obama was a grown girl, and had a baby outside marriage, are you really telling me that their family would not be held out to the world as the very embodiment of all that is wrong with our culture?
Tell me you are just pretending not to be able to read Sullivan’s post.
It depends on who “we” are. Andrew clearly is talking about Palin’s siblings, as you will see if you read his entire post, which is what made his remark so odd. As in:
” If Obama’s sister had nine kids from two fathers neither of whom she is currently living with, do you really think the press would not have written about it?”
Obama’s entire family is certainly just as “colorful” as Palin’s as far as remarkable family situations are concerned, so if that is what is driving media coverage there should be some parity in treatment of the two families. Of course there isn’t and never has been anything like the feeding frenzy around Obama and his extended family as there has been over the last few days. “We” certainly are talking about siblings, if Sullivan has anything to say about it.
This line of argument would be slightly less bizarre if someone other than Sullivan were pursuing it. I have no doubt that if Obama had an unwed and pregnant 17 year old daughter there would be people and publications engaging in inappropriate attacks, asking inappropriate questions, etc. But Sullivan has no credibility to make that point. What’s he saying? Is it, “Hey, if MY candidate were in similar circumstances then HIS political enemies would behave just as despicably as I’m now behaving”?
He has absolutely no standing to pose as a high-minded non-partisan who lectures the rest of us about the nastiness that exists at all points on the political spectrum. And if he’s just saying that he has license to behave atrociously, because people he doesn’t respect would do the same if given the chance, then he’s too hopelessly juvenile to be taken seriously as anything but an entertainer.
Personally I no longer find him entertaining and the past week has convinced me that I have better things to do with my time than read his blog. Apparently since I stopped reading he’s gone from gleefully publicizing the travails of a teenage girl to throwing stones at Governor Palin’s other relatives. All justified on the grounds that “They started it!” and “They’re no better than we are!” These aren’t “thoughts” worth paying attention to, or “arguments” that require a thoughtful rebuttal.
I take your point, Daniel. But in this case, I think the difference is that for Obama, we’re talking about a set of far-away and partially-related (I’m lacking a better term here, non-nuclear maybe?) siblings and relations versus, for Palin, her children. And “the children” has always been a powerful trope in American politics. We do everything “for the children,” or in cases like running up the debt, “to the children.” We want to leave a better world “for the children.” Etc, etc. I think that goes a ways toward explaining why a half-brother in Kenya rates a “meh” versus the media circus around Levi & Bristol. Not all the way, of course. There’s a “Billy Carter” factor in here, too, methinks. The media’s never been kind to folks they perceive as “hicks.”
In polygamous royal families, the children of other wives tend to get poisoned.
But what does Sullivan know about “breeders”?
Grumpy Old Man,
I appreciate your interesting historical point about dynastic crimes, but your final remark is, I think, beneath this blog. You’re more than articulate enough to make your points on their merits.
ossicle,
Forgive me for being snarky. I’m told, though, that San Francisco is less than hospitable to families with small children.
To be fair, I don’t think having relatives in far-flung lands is that foreign a concept to Americans (we are an immigrant nation, after all), nor is having half-siblings one barely knows (see: Cindy McCain’s sisters.)
Obama’s family is certainly more colorful in the literal sense of skin color–I mean it looked like the bridge of the Enterprise out there after his acceptance speech.
Daniel, et al: Sullivan’s (poor choice of) wording confuses the issue… I’m no defender, but I had this same thought and took it to mean that if Obama’s DAUGHTER (assuming, of course, she were also 17) were pregnant out of wedlock as Palin’s is, the right-wing media would be making MUCH hay out of it — and the “liberal” media would be “reporting” on the hay as much as possible.
As a member of said media (though low on the totum), I have a front-row seat to how this has worked for years. Yes, journalists overall lean left. However, they drastically overcompensate at every turn, reporting far too much on every conservative criticism of a liberal, no matter how bizarre, irrelevant or otherwise.
And yes, there IS hypocrisy and it is rampant. Laura Ingraham excoriating some Spears girl over her pregnancy, yet castigating “the media” for simply reporting that Palin’s daughter (who they have definitely shoved into the public eye, and God help that poor schmuck boyfriend!) is pregnant. This is similar to Hannity et al’s condemning Edwards’ affair as if it disqualifies him from ever serving, while entirely ignoring McCain’s past dalliance.
But to the point. If it were Obama’s daughter, we’d hear about it every day. Not to mention the flyers they’d be handing out in my rural Kentucky hometown.
(Justinslot: Nice name, firstly, and awesome retort on the Enterprise!)
Daniel,
You miss Andrew’s euphemistic use of the term “colorful”. He doesn’t mean “eccentric”, he means “sexually libertine”. It’s all about the sex, not the snowmobiles.