Kristen Caldwell Frontline Interview
Excerpt:
So yeah, I can picture him as this slightly — “chubby” is too strong, but rounded, short little guy, Barry Obama. And he told us that his father was an Indonesian king and that he was a prince, and after he finished school he was going to go back, and he would be a ruler in Indonesia. And I absolutely believed him.
I understand that he told his fifth-grade class that he was Kenyan royalty, but I never heard that story until years later. My sister and I remember very clearly that he was an Indonesian prince and that he would be going back there. So there was some reference to where he had come from, and the understanding was his family was there.
I didn’t know who he lived with at the time. I since know that it was his grandparents. I knew where he lived, because a lot of times if it rained, my dad would give him a ride home from the tennis courts, because we would hang out after school. In the summers we’d hang out at the tennis courts; after school we would hang out at the tennis courts. That’s what we did. And that’s what Barry did pretty much from fifth through eighth grade. And I think after he leaned up and grew and got into basketball, he shifted away from tennis.
The Indonesian story and stuff, what was your take on that? What do you think he was doing? Why did he need to do that?
I can only imagine now, a 10-year-old leaving his mother and stepfather and at that point I think baby stepsister. So he lived in Hawaii from when he was born until he was 6, lived in Indonesia from 6 to 10. Arriving in Hawaii — again, having not been there — I would think he would have felt very, very fish-out-of-water, very uncomfortable, and like anybody, he’d have to have a little bit of bravado to mask the insecurities. So I think that was the prince story.
Check your dates. There’s a picture of him in school in Hawaii in December 1969 with a kid named Scott in third grade.
He would have been a little over 8 years old in that photo.
Yes, another “royalty” story. I assume that very possibly in Indonesia he was told that he did belong to that family, and probably became fluent in Bahasa. No wonder he’s totally nuts.