Under the Sun Cynthia Oi

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For vacations, go where family, memories reside

Colleagues alerted me to Cokie Roberts' loopy disapproval of Barack Obama's vacation location.

Not into self-torture, I don't normally tune in to Sunday political jabberwocky shows. Besides, I was otherwise occupied.

My sister was visiting from the mainland. A local girl -- born and raised in the islands, Kaimuki High, UH grad -- she comes in the summer when she's not teaching school. She spends time with our parents, gets to be mom again with her older daughter who moved here a few years back, dotes on her nephews, hangs with old friends and checks out familiar haunts.

Kind of like what Obama is doing, except that my sister isn't running for president so no one is taking pot shots at her for taking time off in Hawaii.

Either because of ignorance about Hawaii or to deliver a false impression, Obama's detractors and talking knuckleheads masquerading as sage political experts are raising their eyebrows and tsk-tsking about Obama chilling in "paradise."

Roberts cranked up the cheek-sucking when she said on an ABC program that Obama's "going off this week to vacation in Hawaii does not make any sense whatsoever. I know his grandmother lives in Hawaii and I know Hawaii is a state, but it has the look of him going off to some sort of foreign, exotic place."

In case she didn't get her point across, Roberts repeated herself on NPR, using pretty much the same words, buttressing the "foreign" and "exotic" characterizations by calling Hawaii a "somewhat odd place." She suggested that South Carolina's Myrtle Beach would have been a better choice.

Soon thereafter came remarks about Hawaii being a vacation spot for "elitists," as if the state was all about swanky Four Seasons resorts draped with the rich and famous when in truth most of the millions of visitors are regular middle-class people who book economy-class hotel rooms.

Another pundit-type commented that Obama should have gone to a national park. I'm guessing this guy doesn't know Hawaii has two of them, though they have nene geese and silverswords instead of roaming buffalo and giant redwoods.

What all of this blather boils down to is a narrow image of what's considered American. Elm and maples? American. Ohia and koa trees? Exotic. Multicultural populations? Foreign.

I'm guessing Cokie hasn't been to Hawaii or if she has, she didn't get around much. There's nothing exotic or foreign about the Mickey D's and Starbucks that occupy local shopping malls anchored by Macy's and Banana Republic.

Roberts and her ilk probably didn't mean to insinuate that the Democratic candidate isn't true-blue, all-the-way USA. They didn't mean to reinforce the false notion being plied by the opposition that he's not one of "us," for surely they know "us" covers all kinds of American faces like those in Hawaii.

As to Robert's puzzlement about why Hawaii and not Myrtle Beach? Hawaii is where Obama's family and memories reside, just as my sister's do. She has none of those in South Carolina.