Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

NYT Mag features new book..Obama interview about his mother:'She was a very strong person..
Politico ^ | 4-20-11 | Mike Allen

Posted on 04/20/2011 8:16:05 AM PDT by STARWISE

Complete title:

NYT Mag features new book with Obama interview about his mother: 'She was a very strong person in her own way'

FIRST LOOK – New York Times Magazine cover story, “WHY SHE WENT: When Barry Obama was 6 years old [in 1967], his mother moved him to Indonesia.

It was a decision that would define his life and hers,” by Janny Scott, a reporter for The New York Times who went on leave in 2008 to write “A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother,” from which this article, "The Young Mother Abroad," is adapted:

“The photograph showed the son, but my eye gravitated toward the mother. That first glimpse was surprising — the stout, pale-skinned woman in sturdy sandals, standing squarely a half-step ahead of the lithe, darker-skinned figure to her left.

His elastic-band body bespoke discipline, even asceticism. Her form was well padded, territory ceded long ago to the pleasures of appetite and the forces of anatomical destiny.

He had the studied casualness of a catalog model, in khakis, at home in the viewfinder. She met the camera head-on, dressed in hand-loomed textile dyed indigo, a silver earring half-hidden in the cascading curtain of her dark hair. She carried her chin a few degrees higher than most. His right hand rested on her shoulder, lightly.

The photograph, taken on a Manhattan rooftop in August 1987 and e-mailed to me 20 years later, was a revelation and a puzzle.

The man was Barack Obama at 26, the community organizer from Chicago on a visit to New York. The woman was Stanley Ann Dunham, his mother. …

It was impossible not to question the stereotype to which she had been expediently reduced: the white woman from Kansas. … The earthy figure in the photograph did not fit any of those [oversimplifications], as I learned over the course of two and a half years of research, travel and nearly 200 interviews. …

“When we spoke last July, Obama recalled … serial displacements.

‘I think that was harder on a 10-year-old boy than he’d care to admit at the time,’ Obama said, sitting in a chair in the Oval Office and speaking about his mother with a mix of affection and critical distance. ‘When we were separated again during high school, at that point I was old enough to say, “This is my choice, my? decision.”

But being a parent now and looking back at that, I could see — you know what? — that would be hard on a kid.’ He spoke about his mother with fondness, humor and a degree of candor that I had not expected.

There was also in his tone at times a hint of gentle forbearance. Perhaps it was the tone of someone whose patience had been tested, by a person he loved, to the point where he had stepped back to a safer distance. Or perhaps it was the knowingness of a grown child seeing his parent as irredeemably human. ‘She was a very strong person in her own way,’ Obama said, when I asked about Ann’s limitations as a mother. ‘Resilient, able to bounce back from setbacks, persistent — the fact that she ended up finishing her dissertation.

But despite all those strengths, she was not a well-organized person. And that disorganization, you know, spilled over.

Had it not been for my grandparents, I think, providing some sort of safety net financially, being able to take me and my sister on at certain spots, I think my mother would have had to make some different decisions. And I think that sometimes she took for granted that, “Well, it’ll all work out, and it’ll be fine.”

But the fact is, it might not always have been fine, had it not been for my grandmother. . . . Had she not been there to provide that floor, I think our young lives could have been much more chaotic than they were.’

“But he did not, he said, hold his mother’s choices against her. Part of being an adult is seeing your parents ‘as people who have their own strengths, weaknesses, quirks, longings.’

He did not believe, he said, that parents served their children well by being unhappy. If his mother had cramped her spirit, it would not have given him a happier childhood. As it was, she gave him the single most important gift a parent can give — ‘a sense of unconditional love that was big enough that, with all the surface disturbances of our lives, it sustained me, entirely.’’

Article .. See the cover: “Barack Obama [in pirate hat and patch] with his mother in Hawaii. Photograph from friends and family of Stanley Ann Dunham.”


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Front Page News; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: anndunham; annsoetoro; barrysoetoro; birthcertificate; certifigate; communism; dunham; eligibility; fellowtravelers; hawaii; indonesia; islam; jakarta; lolo; lolosoetoro; marxism; naturalborncitizen; obama; pakistan; progressives; socialism; soetoro; stanleyann; stanleyanndunham
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-59 next last

A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother

1 posted on 04/20/2011 8:16:07 AM PDT by STARWISE
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: onyx; penelopesire; maggief; hoosiermama; SE Mom; Fred Nerks; Red Steel; seekthetruth; ...

.. Ping!


2 posted on 04/20/2011 8:17:28 AM PDT by STARWISE (The overlords are in place .. we are a nation under siege .. pray, go Galt & hunker down)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: STARWISE
No, she was a commie slut...very simple. A Marxist sex toy and Zero was the bastard spawn.
3 posted on 04/20/2011 8:17:40 AM PDT by rightwingextremist1776
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: STARWISE

The story of Obozo’s mother....Or how to give birth and raise an America destroying statist SOB.


4 posted on 04/20/2011 8:19:19 AM PDT by Names Ash Housewares ( Refusing to kneel before the "messiah".)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: rightwingextremist1776
" No, she was a commie slut...very simple. A Marxist sex toy and Zero was the bastard spawn."

LOL!!! Tell us how you really feel...

5 posted on 04/20/2011 8:19:37 AM PDT by avacado
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: STARWISE

Once a pirate, always a pirate.


6 posted on 04/20/2011 8:20:14 AM PDT by TigerClaws
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: rightwingextremist1776
Didn't she get knocked up before she was 18?

And how could Obmama Sr. and her be legally married if he had and other wife in Kenya?

7 posted on 04/20/2011 8:21:55 AM PDT by WakeUpAndVote
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: STARWISE

Obama’s official story has him in Indonesia. But..

http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=188801

A classmate from Hawaii dug up this picture.


8 posted on 04/20/2011 8:22:19 AM PDT by TigerClaws
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: STARWISE

His mother looks 15 in that picture


9 posted on 04/20/2011 8:22:41 AM PDT by woofie
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: STARWISE

she looks like she is 15


10 posted on 04/20/2011 8:24:19 AM PDT by mdel747
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: STARWISE

“Dreams of My (Communist, America-Hating) Mother”?


11 posted on 04/20/2011 8:26:28 AM PDT by PBRSTREETGANG
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: TigerClaws

but pirate?


12 posted on 04/20/2011 8:26:34 AM PDT by LachlanMinnesota (Which are you? A producer, a looter, or a moocher of wealth?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: STARWISE

even at 4, little Pirate Barry had already started to fulfil his dreams of looting and plundering the wealth of others.


13 posted on 04/20/2011 8:26:42 AM PDT by digger48
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: TigerClaws

Yep .. always contradictions, puzzles, mazes ..


14 posted on 04/20/2011 8:27:32 AM PDT by STARWISE (The overlords are in place .. we are a nation under siege .. pray, go Galt & hunker down)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: STARWISE

“His elastic-band body bespoke discipline, even asceticism. Her form was well padded, territory ceded long ago to the pleasures of appetite and the forces of anatomical destiny.

Oh, please!


15 posted on 04/20/2011 8:27:32 AM PDT by ilovesarah2012
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: STARWISE

Looks like a young Eric Holder. ;)


16 posted on 04/20/2011 8:28:22 AM PDT by maggief
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: STARWISE

Nothing biased about this book.


17 posted on 04/20/2011 8:29:53 AM PDT by popdonnelly (Democrats = authoritarian socialists)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: STARWISE

Obama has a sister? Who is she? Where is she? Why is she never discussed in the press?

Has she started her own company like “Billy Beer?”


18 posted on 04/20/2011 8:30:35 AM PDT by LachlanMinnesota (Which are you? A producer, a looter, or a moocher of wealth?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: TigerClaws
Once a pirate, always a pirate. corrected: Once a butt pirate, always a butt pirate.
19 posted on 04/20/2011 8:35:27 AM PDT by ChiefJayStrongbow
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: STARWISE

20 posted on 04/20/2011 8:35:36 AM PDT by Qbert ("The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry" - William F. Buckley, Jr.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-59 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson