Roger Cohen's "A White Woman From Kansas": Obama's Mother Idealized

As the U.S. economy continues to tank, Roger Cohen, writing from London, lauds a new biography of Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, in his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "A White Woman From Kansas" (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/03/opinion/03iht-edcohen03.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss). Cohen writes:

"Now, thanks to Janny Scott’s remarkable 'A Singular Woman,' absence has become presence. Stanley Ann Dunham, the parent who raised Obama, emerges from romanticized vagueness into contours as original as her name.

. . . .

To an equally unusual degree, because Dunham loved him fiercely, [Obama] had the emotional grounding to survive such self-definition."

Obama's mother "raised" him? She "loved him fiercely"? In fact, she abandoned him twice in furtherance of her studies and career, first when he was 10, and a second time when he was 14. Sorry, Roger, I don't care if I was offered the CEO slot at a top ten Fortune 500 company, I would never abandon any of my children.

Obama "had the emotional grounding to survive such self-definition"? Sorry again, but I cry for the young man, who was scarred for life by the perambulations of a father and mother in search of narcissistic self-fulfillment, and pray that he has been able to build, together with Michelle, a more secure, nurturing environment for his two daughters.

Cohen concludes, "I found myself liking Dunham". Anyone familiar with this blog knows why I am not surprised.