Cause you know how that affects your ability to govern…

a) They make it sound as if they had to go dig out the business about alcoholism, possible abuse of Ruth, etc., from family members while Obama hid it. But all that stuff is *in Obama’s autobiography*, where he talks at length about coming to terms with his discovery of his father’s shortcomings, as well as about the debt he owes his father, etc. Sure, his account of how his father lost his government job is friendlier to Obama Sr. than theirs, but he doesn’t make his father out to be a saint – you get both the rosy picture that his mother told him (she clearly wanted Obama to see his father in the best light, even though she’d initiated the divorce), and the less rosy picture some other family members told, so that the final portrait shows a man with both significant good and bad points.

b) Obama goes on at length about his loving relationship with his maternal grandparents, and then discusses how he was upset by *one incident* where his grandmother feared a strange black man, partly because of his color. Which I read as showing how cultural attitudes about race can affect even the best intentioned of us. But that article tries to make out that Obama’s denying everything positive about his mother’s family, and simply showing his grandparents as racists who hurt him. I guess that’s so they can make him look like someone who always blames white people (like his maternal grandparents) for everything, and ignores any shortcomings of black people (like his father).