Kids in the closet

The Italian Vanity Fair has interviewed a half-brother of Barack Obama who is living on a $1 per day in Nigeria. Born to Obama’s father who left when Obama was two. [story]

The Minnesota Star-Tribune reports:

When Cindy McCain talks about growing up, she usually refers to herself as an “only child” — a phrase that ignores the existence of her half-sisters.

“It’s terribly painful,” Kathleen Hensely Portalski said. “It is as if she is the ‘real’ daughter. I am also a real daughter.”

Portalski said she stood quietly by for decades while her father lavished attention on his second family. But the past few months — with Cindy McCain’s repeated references to being her father’s only child — finally became too much. “I was his family, too,” she said from Phoenix.

Cindy McCain has another half-sister, Dixie Burd, by a previous relationship. [story]