Obsessing over the candidates families

There are many problems for the media in covering political campaigns which now stretch nearly 2 full years. A reporter can only examine the candidates navel so many times. That leads to going further and further to give background on the candidates and their families. The argument can be made that the family is fair game to a certain extent as they can exercise considerable influence or cause embarrassment for the potential future president. In that regard, I understand reporting on the continuing question of whether Sen. Clinton's brother received payment for facilitating a pardon for some crook when the senator's husband was president. However, there are limits to what should be considered germane to the campaign. I ignored it last week when the Washington Post dedicated barrels of ink to a story about Mitt Romney's great-great-grandfather being a polygamist (which was old news anyways). Now, the Baltimore Sun has gone even further down Sen. Obama's family.

According to the research, one of Obama's great-great-great-great grandfathers, George Washington Overall, owned two slaves who were recorded in the 1850 census in Nelson County, Ky. The same records show that one of Obama's great-great-great-great-great-grandmothers, Mary Duvall, also owned two slaves.

When you have to go back more than two great-great . . . you lose any chance of the conduct being relevant. I'm not in Obama's camp, but vote for or against him based on his proposals for the future not based on what some distant relative did in the past.

The only good thing about this article is it provides an opportunity to mock the stupid idea of reparations.