* The press coverage is focusing on two themes: polite disagreement about gay rights, and general warm feelings about vague stuff like progress and cooperation.
I guess lecturing Kenyatta on gay rights was easier than mentioning his alleged role in organizing gangs to murder his opponents, before and after the election that brought him to power.
* There is very little interest by the American media in Africa generally. Can you imagine if a Canadian or German restaurant was found serving human meat? But when a Nigerian restaurant was discovered recently it was given little press. Likewise, how much ink is spilled on the ongoing reports of cannibalism, slavery, or witchcraft using human body parts? Any time you begin to look at Africa, you quickly notice the abject stupidity and barbarism endemic to the continent. And this, of course, runs afoul of the Narrative that Africans are beautiful innocent angelic creatures whose problems are solely the result of white colonizers. Obama Sr being a serial bigamist is a hate fact similar to MLK being a whoremonger. Media visits to Obama’s village might lead to uncomfortable questions about where the restrooms are and where the fresh water comes from.
* I think that Barack Obama and Bill Ayers became acquainted during the years 1982-1985, when both men were living in New York City. Obama lived in the city from 1981 to 1985, and Ayers lived there from 1978 to 1988.
A few weeks after Obama moved to New York in order to study political science at Columbia University, the New York newspapers began publishing articles about the robbery of a Brinks armored car that occurred on October 20, 1981. The robbers included Kathy Boudin, who had been a member of the Weather Underground organization along with Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohn. Ayers and Dohrn had dropped out of the Weather Underground and surrendered to the police in November 1980, but Boudin remained active and eventually was arrested while committing the robbery in October 1981.
One of the robbers arrested with Boudin was an African-American radical who called himself Sekou Odinga and who was a Moslem. Odinga’s real name was Nathaniel Burns, but he had adopted that African name in the late 1960s, when he met Odinga Odinga, the Vice President of Kenya and a Moslem, while the latter was visiting California during a state visit. At that time Burns belonged to the Black Panthers, and the Kenyan official met with some Black Panther members, including Burns. Burns was so impressed with this meeting that he began calling himself Sekou Odinga and eventually converted to Islam.
Odinga Odinga, the Vice President of Kenya, was also related to Barack Obama, Sr., the legal father of Barack Obama, Jr. Odinga Odinga’s son Rail Odinga calls himself the cousin of Barack Obama, Jr., so Odinga Odinga apparently was a half-brother or cousin of Barack Obama, Sr. Much of the Obama family in Kenya is Christian, however.
I doubt that Obama — studying in NYC in 1982 — knew any Odingas living in Kenya or knew the Odinga who participted in the Brinks robbery, but by that time he might have recognized the Odinga name as a name that somehow was related to the Obama family and to the political leadership in Kenya. Therefore if Barack Obama read any articles in the New York newspapers about the Brinks robbery, his attention probably focused on Sekou Odinga, who had been arrested and was being prosecuted for his participation in that robbery. I think that many elements in Sekou Odinga’s history and persona might have fascinated Obama.
The grand jury that examined the Brinks robbery met in May 1982, and New York newspapers reported that Bernardine Dohrn refused to testify. (The robbers had rented their getaway car using personal identification stolen from customers of a store called Broadway Baby, which was managed by Dohrn.) Eventually Dohrn was sentenced to a prison term for contempt of court because of her refusal to testify. Articles about Dohrn’s refusal to testify and about her subsequent imprisonment were published in New York newspapers during the middle of 1982.
I speculate that Obama decided to try to write a research paper about Sekou Odinga for a class at Columbia and therefore contacted Ayers to request Ayers’ help in obtaining information about Odinga, by interviewing Ayers, Dohrn, Boudin or Odinga.
No matter how they did become acquainted, it is apparent that they were acquainted by the summer of 1985, because Obama’s autobiography (ghost written by Ayers) describes an incident along the Hudson River in New York City during that summer, and one of Ayers’ own books describes a similar incident.
For those reasons, I think that Obama and Ayers became acquainted in New York City sometimes during the years 1982 to 1985.
* The soi-disant foreign aristocrat who marries a naive young beauty under false pretenses and then disappears after knocking her up used to be a known type, but that implies that teenage girls need guidance/rules, so that particular cultural trope has pretty much gone down the memory hole. The Pill and social strictures against young marriage get about the same job done, I guess.
