Obama Leaves Election Campaign to Visit Gravely Sick Grandmother
Published in Corriere della Sera
(Italy) on 21 October 2008
by Alessandra Farkas (link to original)
NEW YORK Suddenly an event happened exactly two weeks from the historical presidential elections on Nov. 4. Yesterday night, the democratic candidate, Barack Obama, announced that he will stop his election campaign for two days to go to Hawaii to visit his maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, a gravely sick woman. According to the 85-year-old Madelyn, she would only wait to give farewell to her adored grandson before she died.
His grandmother recently left the hospital," explained spokesman Robert Gibbs. "And in the recent weeks her health has deteriorated to the point that the situation is very grave. To rush to the bedside of what he called my white grandmother, Obama decided to cancel all of his appearances and rallies planned for Thursday and Friday. In all probability, he will resume his campaign on Saturday.
The hiatus could not arrive at a more critical moment. While he has already initiated the countdown for the vote, Republican rival John McCain and his running mate Sarah Palin raised the tone of confrontation, accusing Obama of all sorts of misdeeds. Obama's sudden although temporary departure from the scene leaves a dangerous void that can be easily filled up by Republican propaganda. Sen. Obamas grandmother will always be a person more important and central to his life, retorted Gibbs. She brought him up, together with his mother and grandfather, from when he was born to when he went to college.
In his book Dreams from My Father, published in Italy by Nutriment with the title I sogni di mio padre, Obama describes his experience of growing up with his mothers family; a middle-class family from Kansas, (Baptist, but not practicing) and, obviously, all white. In 1963, his parents separated and subsequently divorced; his father of African origin went to the Harvard University to achieve a doctorate, and finally returned to the nation Kenya, where he would die in a road incident in 1982, after visiting his only son on one occasion.
The knowledge of his absent black father came to Obama principally from the stories by his white family and from photographs. My father looked nothing like the people around me," Writes the Illinois senator. "It barely registered in my mind that he was black as pitch, while my mother was white as milk. When Obamas mother died of cancer in 1995, his grandmother Madelyn was there to console him and remain near. And it was her who Obama wanted to thank during the Democratic Convention, when recalling how, for him to continue his studies, she accepted many great sacrifices.
And while the inner GOP continues to question Colin Powell's pro-Obama endorsement, Obama continues the defection of neoconservatives intellectuals who are disappointed by John McCain. Since Peggy Nonnan, David Brooks, and Buckley Jr., the most recent one to turn his back to McCain is Ken Adelman, the veteran diplomat, the iron conservative and intimate friend of Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, who worked for five Republican administrations: Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and both Bushes.
For the first time in my life, I will be voting for a Democratic candidate: Obama, Reveals Adelman to the weekly New Yorker. And for two reasons: The erratic, imprudent and irrational behavior of McCain during the economic crisis and the fact that he has chosen Sarah Palin as his running mate." He says, I would not even employ her as a middle-ranked adjutant.
His grandmother recently left the hospital," explained spokesman Robert Gibbs. "And in the recent weeks her health has deteriorated to the point that the situation is very grave. To rush to the bedside of what he called my white grandmother, Obama decided to cancel all of his appearances and rallies planned for Thursday and Friday. In all probability, he will resume his campaign on Saturday.
The hiatus could not arrive at a more critical moment. While he has already initiated the countdown for the vote, Republican rival John McCain and his running mate Sarah Palin raised the tone of confrontation, accusing Obama of all sorts of misdeeds. Obama's sudden although temporary departure from the scene leaves a dangerous void that can be easily filled up by Republican propaganda. Sen. Obamas grandmother will always be a person more important and central to his life, retorted Gibbs. She brought him up, together with his mother and grandfather, from when he was born to when he went to college.
In his book Dreams from My Father, published in Italy by Nutriment with the title I sogni di mio padre, Obama describes his experience of growing up with his mothers family; a middle-class family from Kansas, (Baptist, but not practicing) and, obviously, all white. In 1963, his parents separated and subsequently divorced; his father of African origin went to the Harvard University to achieve a doctorate, and finally returned to the nation Kenya, where he would die in a road incident in 1982, after visiting his only son on one occasion.
The knowledge of his absent black father came to Obama principally from the stories by his white family and from photographs. My father looked nothing like the people around me," Writes the Illinois senator. "It barely registered in my mind that he was black as pitch, while my mother was white as milk. When Obamas mother died of cancer in 1995, his grandmother Madelyn was there to console him and remain near. And it was her who Obama wanted to thank during the Democratic Convention, when recalling how, for him to continue his studies, she accepted many great sacrifices.
And while the inner GOP continues to question Colin Powell's pro-Obama endorsement, Obama continues the defection of neoconservatives intellectuals who are disappointed by John McCain. Since Peggy Nonnan, David Brooks, and Buckley Jr., the most recent one to turn his back to McCain is Ken Adelman, the veteran diplomat, the iron conservative and intimate friend of Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, who worked for five Republican administrations: Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and both Bushes.
For the first time in my life, I will be voting for a Democratic candidate: Obama, Reveals Adelman to the weekly New Yorker. And for two reasons: The erratic, imprudent and irrational behavior of McCain during the economic crisis and the fact that he has chosen Sarah Palin as his running mate." He says, I would not even employ her as a middle-ranked adjutant.