I am of the opinion that everyone is entitled to their opinions. That’s one thing that makes America great. I almost never criticize someone for speaking their mind because it’s their mind, not mine. But I’m also for sunlight, and I couldn’t let this one pass by in the shadows of Blogworld.

Tom Roeser writes:

This time I will merely ask a question, having read the latest Lynn Sweet adulatory column on the Senator run in the Democratic newspaper of record. Recording all his journeys, like Boswell did Johnson, she says [Barack] Obama will travel to Kenya next month where his father lived. This is the latest in a series of Obama references to his father, including his best-selling book, Dreams From My Father. Which leads me to wonder why he dwells so much on his absent black father, who skipped out on the family when Obama was a child in order to attend Harvard, never to return…and so little on his white mother from Kansas who raised the children alone and remained with them throughout their lives?

Perhaps Ms. Sweet who is better versed in liberal theology could tell us if it is more politically romantic in this pre-presidential primary season for a black candidate to dwell on the absent black father than the white Mom who stuck it out. If so, that wistfulness is germane only to liberal Democrats. Gerald Ford, for instance, tells us that his father, Leslie King, came to see Ford once when the future president was a teen-ager, introduced himself and left. Ford never cared to follow up the association: very understandable…but then Ford did not have an absent black father but a very irresponsible white one. Is Obama by his frequent references telling us things are different with blacks? A future Obama biographer may tell us (and maybe it will be Ms. Sweet): why the longing for the black father and not more praise for the white mother who stayed by him? No, on further reflection, I don’t think it will be Ms. Sweet. Had my father abandoned me, I don’t think I’d be writing books fantasizing about him but would probably do one about my mother.

Dan Curry (who works for Joe Birkett’s campaign) writes on his blog that the above screed is “Very entertaining and well-written.”

Entertaining in what way, Dan? And why does TR feel qualified to read Obama’s mind and conclude that race is the overriding factor in any of this?

Obama wrote about his mom in the preface to his book (supplied by a commenter):

“I think sometimes that had I known she would not survive her illness, I might have written a different book—less a meditation on the absent parent, more a celebration of the one who was the single constant in my life. In my daughters I see her every day, her joy, her capacity for wonder. I won’t try to describe how deeply I mourn her passing still. I know that she was the kindest, most generous spirit I have ever known, and that what is best in me I owe to her.”