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Barack Obama's aunt found living in Southie project
By adamg on Thu, 10/30/2008 - 9:14am
The Times of London (!) tracks down Zeituni Onyango to "a rundown public housing estate" on Flaherty Way (the West Broadway project). The paper adds:
A second relative believed to be the long-lost "Uncle Omar" described in the book was beaten by armed robbers with a "sawed-off rifle"” while working in a corner shop in the Dorchester area of the city. He was later evicted from his one-bedroom flat for failing to pay $2,324.20 (£1,488) arrears, according to the Boston Housing Court.
Via Blue Mass. Group.
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Comments
Amazing the Globe and Herald
Amazing the Globe and Herald both missed this story!
Unless they didnt want to attract unwanted attention on Obamas extended family?
The Globe has it
It's on the first page of today's Metro section.
Yeah but some English paper
Yeah but some English paper seems to have beaten them to the punch
I remember when Kerry was running the Globe and Herald were dropping stories on him and his family like there was no tomorrow. Like when they suprised him by telling him his grandfather committed suicide at the Park Plaza many years back. They are normally pretty good about this stuff.
The Brits had it first
Yesterday.
This is just a thing the
This is just a thing the British newspapers like to do. Every election they announce that a candidate for the American presidency is a tenth cousin once removed to Queen Elizabeth. This time, they found a long lost Obama, so they ran with it.
Reality is Relatives
The article says that the aunt is living in public housing because she has a wheelchair-accessable "flat".
Here's the deal with relatives in public housing: if you try to help them out, it shows up in their bank accounts. If it shows up there, it shows up in the yearly audits that money other than qualified support came in. If that happens, they can lose their housing. We have offered to help out my husband's elderly grandmother and been rebuffed for two reasons: pride, and means review.
Why not just have them move in? We had a go-around with my Aunt's disability because her case reviewer had a problem with her paying my parents $200 per month for food and utilities and lodging - never mind that she could not EVER even find food that cheap living alone, let alone room and board. The clueless person couldn't understand why my parents didn't just fully support her so that she wouldn't need a disability check and healthcare costs for Lupus if she lived with them, why two retired people with fixed incomes needed food money from a third, etc. She somehow didn't get how much the real cost of living is. Fortunately, the supervisor that got pulled into the mess straightened her out.
So, unless you have Pelosi or Cindy McCain quantities of wealth which permit you to pay for everything for a needy elder, you really can't pay for anything. Obama doesn't have that kind of scratch - IF these folks even told him that they could use some help OR if they would even LET them help him!
*Irony Alert*
The West Broadway project was, I believe, one of the projects that Diane Wilkerson successfully removed from "whites only" status when Flynn wasn't complying with the federal laws on assignment of units.
Globe Scooped
The Globe and Herald got scooped, that's all. It happens. Hell, I even did it once.
Always good to see Boston's public image reinforced around the world though.
Image
Thanks for the drive-by posting. I'm not sure how the fact that Boston has housing projects and crime hurts Boston's image abroad. What? London doesn't have either?
Quick someone check to see
Quick someone check to see if the publishers of the UK Times is in any way connected to the producers of all of these new Boston gangsta movies and tv shows...
Fox?
The Times of London is part of the Rupert Murdoch media empire. 20th Century-Fox is another part.
Heh: Wrong ethnicity
Hollywood only likes movies about Irish-American hoods living their lives of violent desperation on the gritty streets of Southie and the Town.
Is it that bad?
I recall much of it being closed and rebuilt over the past few years.
I don't think so.
No stats here, but empirically, not like Old Colony, D Street.
I thought West Broadway and D Street are the same project, no?
Hmm - I was thinking of the buildings that are on D Street but
much closer to Dorchester Ave & Old Colony Ave. However, it may be indeed, just the back side of the West Bway ones.
the expression "found living" implies an unintended meaning
Such as: She was believed to be dead.
Or ...
It means:
Nobody knew where she'd disappeared to, but then we found her. Living in Boston.
Did she disappear or did no
Did she disappear or did no one care about her or her whereabouts until now?
has been living quietly for years in a South Boston
Boston.com needs a proofreader
Their current headline on this story reads:
Obama aunt confirmed to lived in Boston
they need a competent news
they need a competent news editor as well... this is such a non-story. In more local news, I took a big shit after lunch today. Update at 11-
Auntie here illegally
AP reports.
The powers that be have no
The powers that be have no idea how she got the apartment. No comment.
How dare someone...
Question OBAMA!'s family life! This is outrageous! All hail OBAMA!
Obama didn't put her in the
Obama didn't put her in the apartment. This is why you have to vote No on Question 1. The state needs the money to pay for housing for people under deportation orders. If you think this woman is the only one, think again.
All Knowing, All Seeing
And lo, he should automatically know by extrasensory perception that various relatives have migrated across a border and are living nearby. Hire only the best psychics and shit, so that no known or unknown person with minimal DNA overlap goes unhelped. He should also have Cindy McCain/Nancy Pelosi levels of wealth so that he can make sure that every last extended family member on either continent lives in splendor, whether they want his assistance or not.
Slipping, I tell you. They guy is slipping.
Should they all be living in
Should they all be living in luxury? Of course not.
Should the campaign have known she was illegal? Of course.
If this had happened during the primaries it could have slowed him down a bit, because the Clinton people would have questioned his political operation for not catching this sooner. I think at this point it wont make a difference.
Is if possible the Globe knew all this before and didnt report it? I think its plausible because the Globe is really good at these investigation pieces, and I think this could explain why the UK had to drop the story on us, some local papers may have been reluctant to run a story that would have resulted in the deportation of a resident of the city.
No conspiracy at the Globe
OK, I'm going to play my professional-journalism card here: If the Globe knew she was living here and she was illegal, you'd have to hijack everybody in the newsroom and stuff them in a dungeon somewhere to keep them from running with the story. There's nothing more a newsroom loves than some juicy scandal, especially one that has national implications (even if those implications come about only because we now have a collective political IQ of about 43).
Instead, I'm betting the Globe simply got beat on the whereabouts of an obscure part of the Obama clan by a British paper. Yeah, the Globe is good at investigative pieces. But why would they be investigating this to begin with?
"There's nothing more a
"There's nothing more a newsroom loves than some juicy scandal,"
Adam: regarding your professional journalist card.... No offence, but the entire country's professional journalists sat on the John Edwards story even after it went public on blogs. The last thing they wanted was a juicy scandal that reflected poorly on progressive John and his saintly wife.
Having said that, the scandal here has nothing to do with Obama - he's not his half-aunt's keeper. The scandal is in the Boston Housing department. There are people waiting for an apartment who can't get one right now.
I'll grant you that
And I'll grant you that the potential scandal here is not the Obama connection (I can't remember: Did people hold Jimmy Carter responsible for his idiot brother?) but that the BHA may not be vetting its tenants properly (which some of us here in Roslindale know only too well thanks to the six or seven shootings - one fatal - linked to one apartment at Washington-Beech last winter).
The reason I don't think the Globe newsroom would have sat on the more general story (i.e., that Obama's aunt is living in a Boston housing project) is because it's the metro staff that would have, or should have, broken the story, and I still have more faith in them than the national media (another grant: Maybe it's because I was a local reporter). But now let's see if my faith in the metro staff is warranted: With the Wilkerson matter dying down for a bit, will they start looking into who gets BHA apartments?
I wouldnt discount a
I wouldnt discount a possible Obama connection. It seems to me like he was awefully ignorant of the whereabouts of an Aunt that he seemed so fond of in his book, a little too ignorant if you ask me. By the time she had officially moved to America, according to her Kenyan based family, seems to be about 8 years ago. Well before Obama was elected to the Senate, but of course after he became a State Senator in Illinois and well after his stint at Harvard where he was obviously involved with lots of different influencal people.
I just think about myself, if I was in the position to help a member of my family by making a simple phone call, especially if she was coming to America from another country, I think I would do it. I would also know where she was. Im well aware of where my family members are all across the world and country, even those we dont speak with anymore. If she was influenctial enough to appear in the book she should have been influencial enough to keep track of her where abouts.
How dare you
question the integrity of our savior?
For his supporters: McCain
For his supporters: McCain on SNL
So when do you just get blocked?
McCain on SNL has as much to do with Obama's aunt living in Southie as it does with the price of tomatoes in China.
You know, for a guy with a login name that Adam didn't even *want* to have out there, you certainly like gambling with borrowed time.
I agree with Kaz...
...or at least the part where he points out how McCain's appearance on SNL has nothing at all to do with Senator Obama's aunt living in Southie.
For
Kaz and Darksun ;-P
or if you prefer:
http://www.universalhub.com/node/21168#comment-61910
You would? I wouldn't.
If a member of my extended family who I'd only met once or twice moved to a different city, I probably wouldn't hear about it. I'm pretty sure I don't even know where all three of my half-brothers live right now, let alone my two step-sisters or my uncle Tony.
Welcome to the real America, macaca.
If I took the time to
If I took the time to mention them in a book I wrote and they took the time to come to my inaugeration I think that yeah I would know more about them.
Im sorry to hear that you dont know the whereabouts of half siblings and immediate uncles, to each his own I guess. We even keep track of the aunt in my family that nobody likes, just because they are family. I email with second and third cousins on a semi regular basis, and theres that one third cousin something something removed that we know is in jail in another state, not that we talk to him but we know hes there lol.
Honestly I get the feeling that Obamas family is more like my family then yours. If a "lost" family member calls you answer and invite them for a visit. When I spent some time in another state I was invited to stay with TWO sets of people on either side of my family who I had never met and who loosely connected to my parents. I declined but my sister has been to other states and had the same thing happen, and my brother ended up at someone elses condo for a night when he was in a pinch between flights. Someone on my fathers side of the family was driving by our area when I was in high school and wanted to stop by and visit, I was the only one home so I called my father who verified it was ok and he would try to come home early. I ended up having lunch with someone I never met but we got along great and I enjoyed hearing about his hometown. Were not rich people but we extend out to family in times of need or if we happen to be around, and I got the feeling Obama was the same way with his family.
Based off of his accounts of her I find it hard to believe he wasnt aware she was in town, and hard to believe that he wouldnt help her if he could. Im not saying its wrong, rather Im saying what I would have done in that situation and I think he would have done the same.
Typical American Families
Our family is like the typical American family - divided and recombined by divorce, remarriage, repeated moving to different places, etc.
I'm wondering if you read Obama's auto-biography where he mentions his aunt. I find it hard to believe you did. His description of her is appreciative, as one tends to be of any family one had never met before, but any implication that they were close didn't come from him. Just because you go to dinner with someone or visit them and have a good time doesn't mean you keep track of them forever. Besides which, she had every reason to lay low and disappear.
I relate to Obama's situation because I was also raised by a single mother, and I also sought out my father's side of the family as an adult. Unlike Obama, I have never actually met my father's siblings or my cousins on that side - my dad fell out with his family decades ago. I met my step-sisters and half-brothers as an adult, and some of us are fairly close now. Others aren't. I don't know where they all are now, but I know where some of them are and could find out if I asked. One of my half-brothers lived in Watertown for three years before I knew it.
Such a complicated and fractured family is entirely typical in America. I'm glad for you that your family experience is so unusual for an American. Bully for you. Enjoy it! And hold off criticizing other people's families. We all do the best we can.
I did read his book, and Ive
I did read his book, and Ive read other accounts as well. My understanding is that they appreciated each other, and she had contact with him on US territory. One would wonder how Obama wouldnt know of any of the travel logisitics for such a visit. I suggest you look a little more into the media reports, and you will find that they had more then that one fleeting meeting in Africa all those years ago, and you will also see that finding her wouldnt be that difficult if he had tried. Seems to me like some intrepid campaign staff person would have at the very least sniffed her out after she made CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS and would have at least told him about her. Many Obama people are obsessed with the man and someone with some access to those records would have picked up on something. The Obama volunteers Ive come across tend to be very clever, quick on their feet, and collegiate. Id bet money on the fact that he at least knew she was in country even if didnt know before the campaign started.
I dont believe my experience is all that unfamiliar to many Americans. I know many people with similar interconnected familys. I also know many people, mostly Italians, who not only know their extended families but the associates of all those people as well.
I dont believe I was insulting anyones family situation, and I think you are being a tad bit defensive about this. While family being out of contact is typical in America it is also typical to have interconnected families that communicate. I mean seriously the guy wrote a book and made visits to Africa, before he was rich... Thats much more itnensive then my visit to Virginia which I was going to do ANYWAY.
Dan Kennedy (Media Nation)
Dan Kennedy (Media Nation) has am interesting take. He likes Wonkette's humor, and TPM's analysis.