Love?
She said, "Love, Lord above,
now you're tryin' to trick me in love."
--Alright Now, Free
Oh what's love got to do
Got to do with it?
What's love but a second-hand emotion?
--What's Love Got to Do With It?,
Tina Turner
_____________
Our condolences to Mr. Obama on the death of his grandmother, but this piece does not concern that. Rather, it concerns the press, and our disappointment with biased reportage.
In today's AP story, by means of a family gloss we are told his mother's father, Stanley Dunham, settled in Hawaii in 1960, where it was "that Stanley Ann later met and fell in love with Obama's father, a Kenyan named Barack Hussein Obama Sr. . . . Their son was born in August 1961, but the marriage didn't last long (Obama's Grandmother Dies a Day Before Election.)"
There is some imbalance and Oliver Stone-ish dreaminess here. The dream is that they "fell in love." Facts are that they had sex, and Obama's 17-year-old mother was three months pregnant when the marriage occurred (2/2/61). As to whether it was love, we cannot know. We do know Obama Sr. was already married at that time to a woman in Kenya (but Muslims are allowed four wives), and that he left mother and child for good after the first year, when he had finished his studies at the University of Hawaii.
The imbalance comes in the way the press treats, say, Sarah Palin's unwed daughter six months preggers, to Obama's mother. They do not say 17-year-old Ms. Palin is enamored of her baby's father, and that is as it should be. Love doesn't enter into it. This is a news story, and facts are facts.
In Obama's mother's day, if you got knocked up you got married, even if it was not to the baby daddy. Any willing male would do (and there is some interesting speculation that Obama's biological father was in fact married American communist Frank Marshall Davis, with whom Obama's mother was an associate and whom Obama closely resembles. Obama mentions him in his biography merely as "Frank.")
The communist parentage is not a big deal when you consider Mr. Obama Sr. was also communistic in his thinking and written policies. Again, Obama Jr. did not have a hand in any of this. He comes by his "spread the wealth around" ethos honestly. I am commenting on how the press is spinning him, and it is spin, and it need not be.
We have Sunshine Laws and journalism schools and better reporters than this. Bias is bias, regardless of who you favor.
now you're tryin' to trick me in love."
--Alright Now, Free
Oh what's love got to do
Got to do with it?
What's love but a second-hand emotion?
--What's Love Got to Do With It?,
Tina Turner
_____________
Our condolences to Mr. Obama on the death of his grandmother, but this piece does not concern that. Rather, it concerns the press, and our disappointment with biased reportage.
In today's AP story, by means of a family gloss we are told his mother's father, Stanley Dunham, settled in Hawaii in 1960, where it was "that Stanley Ann later met and fell in love with Obama's father, a Kenyan named Barack Hussein Obama Sr. . . . Their son was born in August 1961, but the marriage didn't last long (Obama's Grandmother Dies a Day Before Election.)"
There is some imbalance and Oliver Stone-ish dreaminess here. The dream is that they "fell in love." Facts are that they had sex, and Obama's 17-year-old mother was three months pregnant when the marriage occurred (2/2/61). As to whether it was love, we cannot know. We do know Obama Sr. was already married at that time to a woman in Kenya (but Muslims are allowed four wives), and that he left mother and child for good after the first year, when he had finished his studies at the University of Hawaii.
The imbalance comes in the way the press treats, say, Sarah Palin's unwed daughter six months preggers, to Obama's mother. They do not say 17-year-old Ms. Palin is enamored of her baby's father, and that is as it should be. Love doesn't enter into it. This is a news story, and facts are facts.
In Obama's mother's day, if you got knocked up you got married, even if it was not to the baby daddy. Any willing male would do (and there is some interesting speculation that Obama's biological father was in fact married American communist Frank Marshall Davis, with whom Obama's mother was an associate and whom Obama closely resembles. Obama mentions him in his biography merely as "Frank.")
The communist parentage is not a big deal when you consider Mr. Obama Sr. was also communistic in his thinking and written policies. Again, Obama Jr. did not have a hand in any of this. He comes by his "spread the wealth around" ethos honestly. I am commenting on how the press is spinning him, and it is spin, and it need not be.
We have Sunshine Laws and journalism schools and better reporters than this. Bias is bias, regardless of who you favor.
posted by Lisa at 8:00 AM
21 comments
