Where Obama "learned to be cool": profiling Obama's mother in Indonesia
This 1960's photo provided by the presidential campaign of President Barack Obama, shows Obama with his mother Stanley Ann Dunham.
/ AP/Obama Presidential CampaignThe New York Times Magazine this week features an excerpt of a new biography of President Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham -- a complex woman whose unique life and personality shaped Mr. Obama's character more significantly than even Mr. Obama himself initially seemed to realize, according to the story.
Dunham moved with her six-year-old son Barack Obama to Indonesia in 1967 to live with her new husband, Lolo Soetoro. (Her marriage to Barack Obama Sr. had ended not long after she gave birth to Barack Obama in 1960. She met Lolo Soetoro in 1964 and followed him to Indonesia three years later.) Mr. Obama lived there for four years, and the article "The Young Mother Abroad" focuses on that formative period. The article is adapted from New York Times reporter Janny Scott's book, "A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother."
"Our ambassador said this was where Barack learned to be cool," Kay Ikranagara, one of Dunham's closest friends, says of Indonesia.
She was referring to Indonesia's strong emphasis on self-control -- a quality that Mr. Obama is known for now as a political leader. It applied particularly to Mr. Obama as a child in Indonesia because he was expected to tolerate and ignore racists taunts from his classmates - rather than respond - if he wanted them to stop.
"If you get mad and react, you lose," Ikranagara said. "If you learn to laugh and take it without any reaction, you win."
Yet Mr. Obama was shaped by more than just Indonesian culture at that time. It was a period, Scott writes, in which Dunham "impressed upon him her values and, consciously and unconsciously, shaped his emerging understanding of the world. She made choices about her own life too, setting an example that in some ways Obama would eventually embrace, while in other ways intentionally leaving it behind."
She taught him to be tough and fearless, but also disciplined and respectful. She also did her best to give her son a set of moral principles.
"She wanted Barry to have a sense of obligation, to give something back," Scott writes.
Dunham was a hard-working woman, Scott writes, who expected her son to work hard as well and saw great potential in him.
"Sometimes when she talked about Barack, she'd say, 'Well, my son is so bright, he can do anything he ever wants in the world, even be president of the United States.' I re?member her saying that," says Benji Bennington, a friend of Ann's from Hawaii.
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Robert DeNiro is cool. Obama is a wuss. And his mother was a white hippie chick with an attraction for black muslim men who abandoned obama with his grandparents. And obama's father was a woman-abusing drunk who died in a drunk driving accident.
We don't need a cool President, we need one with a proven track record of bringing Americans together to solve the nation's mess. This is not the time to play high school games.
curse:
I have not "tarnished the word fairness to fit a dogmatic interpretation". Fairness in the true sense of the word, CANNOT be acquired for a nation of millions. Freedom can, and is.
Freedom is the right to choose what is fair for yourself; and to act upon the unfairness as best you can. Freedom means you can better yourself so that unfairness is lessened for you.
===================================
Someone before you chose to fight for your right to vote. Was it fair that you could not vote as a female? Was our nation "free" at the time?
And I get your point. Fairness is a leveling of the playing field. For instance, your right to vote.
-_-One--American-_-
LiberalismIsMentalIlness3
donman98
The use of chimp is a give away. Then again, it is hard to function outside the confined box that contains your personality.
LETS RESPECT EACH OTHER, ENCOURAGE EACH OTHER, SMILE TO EACH OTHER, PAT OUR BACKS TOGETHER, HOLD OUR BREATH TOGETHER AND LOVE ONE ANOTHER. Life is too short for calling others names and labelling them whatever comes of our mouths and minds. God loves as equally but gives the brave what they are worth! I LOVE OBAMA.