by Paul Bond
An interview with George Obama, who lives in a hut in Kenya "like something out of 'Slumdog Millionaire'" is featured in the upcoming movie "2016: Obama's America."
Barack Obama’s half-brother, George Obama, is about to make his film debut, and in a feature-length documentary that is critical of the president, no less.
In the movie, 2016: Obama’s America, based on Dinesh D’Souza’s best-selling book The Roots of Obama’s Rage, D’Souza refers to a news report four years ago about George Obama living in a hut in Nairobi, Kenya, “like something out of Slumdog Millionaire.” He’s intrigued, so he tracks him down.
In the film clip embedded above, D’Souza and George Obama are seen chatting on what appears to be a park bench, and D’Souza seems most curious to know why the half-brother of the most powerful man on the planet lives in poverty and without any financial help from President Obama.
“I think he has a family of his own,” George Obama says. “I’m a member of his family, but I’m over-age, so I help myself.”
D’Souza presses him by using the Biblical admonition – one that the president has also cited -- that Americans ought to be “our brother’s keeper,” and George Obama shrugs off that insinuation, as well.
“He’s got other issues to deal with,” he says. “He’s taking care of the world, so he’s taking care of me.”
The focus of the movie, though, is the alleged anger at colonialism that President Obama inherited from his (and George’s) father.
As D’Souza puts it in the book: “This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anti-colonial ambitions, is now setting the nation’s agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son.”
D’Souza, therefore, presses that theory with George Obama, and seems to get agreement from him, as the president's brother argues that Kenya has fallen behind since its independence.
D’Souza clearly enjoys getting to know George Obama and at one point during the interview (though not in the above clip), he jokes that America elected the wrong Obama to be its president.
George Obama is the youngest of several children that Barack Obama, Sr. had with his four wives. He co-wrote a book in 2010, and D’Souza tracked him down through its publisher. D’Souza told The Hollywood Reporter that he met George Obama at a hotel in Nairobi and then they toured his village in Huruma Flats, spending about 12 hours together.
“George is the rebel in Obama’s family. He’s the black sheep,” says D'Souza, who has penned several right-leaning books, such as Letters to a Young Conservative and What's So Great About America.
“George doesn’t go along with the worship of the father and he is politically incorrect on a lot of topics," says D'Souza. "And he’s particularly interesting because he lives in rubble on a few dollars a day while his powerful, multimillionaire brother doesn’t lift a finger to help him.”
2016 was produced by Gerald Molen, the Oscar-winning producer of Schindler’s List, Jurassic Park, Rain Man and Minority Report, and it was bankrolled by a couple of dozen wealthy investors allegedly from across the political spectrum, the most prominent being TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts, who also backed The Conspirator, Robert Redford's movie about the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. His daughter, Laura Ricketts, is one of 27 high-profile, openly gay "super-bundlers" for Obama's 2012 campaign, according to Forbes magazine.
Molen, who doesn't talk politics while producing blockbusters for Steven Spielberg and other A-list moviemakers, has been incrementally outing himself as a rare conservative in the entertainment industry through interviews with THR, Breitbart.com and other outlets.
The movie opens in Houston this week and is screening by invitation-only in Los Angeles next week. It gets a national limited release on July 27.
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