A Hyprocrite

Today I was reminded - yet again - why I have a serious problem with presidential candidate Barack Obama. The guy is a hypocrite. Plain and simple.

As if we needed more proof, the headline that caught my attention this morning was "Found In A Rundown Boston Estate: Barack Obama’s Aunt Zeituni Onyango" and it was an expose by The UK Times Online Newspaper.

Let me start by once again stating that I'm not voting for John McCain despite my strong conservative beliefs. So, the charge that I'm merely trying to do what I can to "help my candidate win" just won't cut it here.

I simply want to ask the kinds of questions that are on my mind (the kinds that I believe the rest of the country is thinking about too) that I feel the mainstream media is ignoring.

For all the talk the past few weeks about Obama being "for the people" and about how he wants to "redistribute the wealth" to help others in need, isn't it a little surprising then to read a story like this about his family?

Only a few miles from where the Democratic presidential candidate studied at Harvard, his Kenyan aunt and uncle, immigrants living in modest circumstances in Boston, live in a disabled-access flat on a rundown public housing estate in South Boston.

Here's a simple, valid question that isn't being asked as a follow-up to this news: Do you really, truly believe that a man who cannot - will not - help his own family (despite his ability to) is actually going to care more about you, someone he's never met and isn't even related to?

I'm sorry, but for all the talk of his Christian roots and beliefs that doesn't seem like the "Christian" thing to do to me.

I'm not nieve either. I understand that family relationships can be...complicated. Sure, we all probably wish we can help out in times of need, but I'm sure there's a part of us thanks to our humn nature that sometimes thinks that it's not our place to help fix our family for the choices and mistakes that they've made in their lives. I'm sure that even the best intentioned individuals experience that from time to time.

Yet, what makes this story different and my charge fair game is the fact that this is the very same aunt so affectionately described in Mr Obama’s best-selling memoir Dreams from My Father. To write about her so lovingly in one instance only to ignore her in reality comes off as being very disingenuous.

This is just another example of how Obama's actions speak louder than his words.

Still think there's no such thing as media bias?

(NOTE: The picture included with this piece is actually one of Obama and his Grandmother, and not of him and his Aunt)