Why do Obama’s relatives matter?

The Times of London Found in a rundown Boston estate: Barack Obama’s aunt Zeituni Onyango
‘Auntie Zeituni’, who, with Uncle Omar, dropped out of sight after moving to the US, is backing the presidential candidate from her modest flat. They also found “Uncle Omar”, too:

Zeituni Onyango, the aunt so affectionately described in Mr Obama’s best-selling memoir Dreams from My Father, lives in a disabled-access flat on a rundown public housing estate in South Boston.

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.

Again and again and again, the foreign press finds what the American won’t.

But should Obama’s relatives matter?

TigerHawk explains why:

He has used these people — his grandmother, his aunt and uncle, and so forth — as props in his political narrative. He wants us to measure him in part by his relationship to these Kenyans, but — and here is the harsh part — only as that relationship is described by him. What if his characterization of that relationship is misleading? What if it turns out that while he is delighted to cite these people as evidence of his humble beginnings — that is what I mean by using them as props — he is not so delighted to consider them as part of his family? Is that not at least a potentially useful insight into the character of this man about whom we know so little?

As Glenn would put it, Indeed.