Like apple butter and rock candy, like sugar plum fairies and Peter Pan, our Grandparents are the Currier and Ives of our lives.

Is there anything in American culture more revered than grandparents? As we age and the memories of our childhood loom so far in the past, the one memory we hold dear in our hearts is that of time spent with our grandparents. Holiday feasts, the special sleepover at Grandma’s, shopping sprees, the summer afternoon with just you and your Grandma while your mother took a few hours for herself. 

We may struggle with our relationships with our parents’ but our grandparents’, they fill a place in our heart like no other.

So it is that when I heard Barack Obama toss his grandmother to the wolves in his now renowned ‘Save My Candidacy' speech on race, my psyche was jarred, in fact, so disturbed by Obama’s remarks that weeks later I continue to be haunted by what the man said.

And I wondered what kind of man for his own political gain could say to the world:  

"I can no more disown him (his preacher of 20 years Reverend Jeremiah Wright) than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."  

His grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, who hailed from Kansas, is now 85 years old. Today, her husband gone, she lives alone in the same high rise building in Honolulu where she raised her grandson. She is in poor health and doesn’t grant interviews.

Obama has released virtually no pictures that capture him with his white grandparents. The face of his Kenyan step-grandmother is everywhere.

Here’s what I find so disturbing about Obama’s remarks.

While acknowledging all of his grandmother’s sacrifices for him, and admitting her love for him, he doesn’t speak to his love for her.

He says he can’t disown Rev. Wright anymore than he can disown his ‘white’ grandmother. Had he thought about disowning his grandmother? Had he thought about disowning her because she was ‘white’? How does he compare disowning his pastor with disowning his own flesh and blood?

Then he completely disengages himself from any attachment to his grandmother by referring to her as ‘’a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe." That woman, his grandmother, made him cringe?

I can’t imagine so depersonalizing someone who had admittedly “helped raise me, sacrifice for me and loved me as much as anything in this world.”

Why was this necessary to include in his speech? What did it add to the conversation other than to reveal the kind of anger and hostility this man apparently feels towards his grandmother and white people?

Enough negative sentiments were voiced in the press in response to Obama’s grandmother smear that Obama on March 20, in a radio interview on Philadelphia’s WIP (AM), felt the need to explain his remarks.

“The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity – she doesn’t. But she is a typical white person who if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know. . . there’s a reaction that’s been bred into our experiences that don’t go away and that sometimes come out in the wrong way, and that’s just the nature of race in our society.”

The ‘typical white person” statement didn’t go over well with the white folks he was referring to, so Obama tried again to clarify his remarks  this time on “The Larry King Show.”

“Well, what I meant really was that some of the fears of street crime and some of the stereotypes that go along with that were responses that I think many people feel. She's not extraordinary in that regard. She is somebody that I love as much as anybody. I mean, she has literally helped to raise me. But those are fears that are embedded in our culture, and embedded in our society, and even within our own families, even within a family like mine that is diverse.”

“She is somebody that I love as much as ANYBODY?”

I'm cringing.

I could tie all this back together. I suppose I could end with something cute like if that’s how you feel, my dear grandson, guess who’s NOT coming to dinner. And guess who won’t be breaking bread with you at your house, the White House or ANYBODY’s  house anytime soon you ungrateful, self-aggrandizing, political opportunist, bigoted brat.

Okay, I just did.