{"id":1168,"date":"2008-08-26T19:52:52","date_gmt":"2008-08-26T23:52:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/?p=1168"},"modified":"2008-08-26T19:52:52","modified_gmt":"2008-08-26T23:52:52","slug":"obamas-bizarre-life-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/2008\/08\/26\/obamas-bizarre-life-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama’s “Bizarre” Life Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Bizarre<\/a>” is how NBC’s Brian Williams described Obama’s life story, the other day. This follows on the heels of Cokie Robert’s calling Hawaii some “foreign, exotic place<\/a>.”\u00c2\u00a0 And then there’s the whole father-from-another-country<\/a> thing.<\/p>\n

I am, at best, a cautious supporter of Barack Obama.\u00c2\u00a0 Of course, it should go without saying that I find him almost infinitely preferable to the alternatives.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s just that I don’t believe the hype, and that I am old enough to know that every of of them will disappoint you, in the end.\u00c2\u00a0 And as great as I think Obama may be, he deserves a lot of criticism, on the merits.<\/p>\n

That said, I am surprised by my deeply personal and visceral reactions<\/a> to those that attack Obama’s status as an American.\u00c2\u00a0 He and I share a lot.\u00c2\u00a0 Our “foreign” fathers married midwestern American mothers, we’ve lived all over the world, and neither one of us desperately need to present America as the savior to the world’s problems<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, and we also shared that Hawaiian experience.\u00c2\u00a0 This is my world, growing up:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

What a foreign bunch, eh?\u00c2\u00a0 No matter what, there are going to be more like me and Obama than there are those like John McCain and Mark Penn.\u00c2\u00a0 We.will.win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Bizarre” is how NBC’s Brian Williams described Obama’s life story, the other day. This follows on the heels of Cokie Robert’s calling Hawaii some “foreign, exotic place.”\u00c2\u00a0 And then there’s the whole father-from-another-country thing. I am, at best, a cautious supporter of Barack Obama.\u00c2\u00a0 Of course, it should go without saying that I find him […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1168\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blacknell.net\/dynamic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}