Missing from the Inauguration: Kamala's sole surviving parent

Kremlinologists used to parse the internal politics of the Soviet Union by studying photos of important events (like the May Day parade) to see who was present (and how far they stood from the dictator of the day), and who was absent.

The politics of the Excited States of America is almost as murky as those of the old USSR. They don't call a certain part of Washington "Foggy Bottom" for nothing, and President Trump never succeeded in draining the Swamp which is just about as opaque as the Kremlin. Here to, lessons can be learned from looking at photos of important events and propagandist photo-ops.

Take Wednesday's Inauguration of Sleepy Joe Biden. [Better change that. How about "President Sleepy Joe Biden"? Ed.] Notably absent from those gathered to watch the descent from Heaven of the Choir Invisible was President Trump. Much has been made of that by the lickspittle media -- "lack of respect", "no sense of tradition", "sore loser", yada yada yada. Big deal.

Also absent were President Joe's parents, for the very good reason that they passed away -- his father in 2002 and his mother in 2010. So also was Shyamala Gopalan, the mother of First Lady-in-waiting Kamala Harris. She died in 2009.

The lady pictured holding a very young Kamala is not her mother. It's the grandmother of her father, Donald Harris, who is still alive, aged 82, and living in Lalaland, where he teaches economics at Stamford University.

You won't see Mr Harris in the Inauguration photos for the very good reason that he wasn't there. One wonders why not. Was he invited but "unable to attend" because of the kung flu?  Or did was he simply not invited, much as Meghan Markle's father was overlooked when they sent out invitations to the Royal Wedding of the Century (TM)?

During the 2020 election campaign, much was made of Ms Harris ancestry. She was hailed as the first black woman [sic] who, if Mr Biden was elected, could be a heartbeat away from the presidensity. When it turned out that she was actually mulatto half-black, "black" changed to "woman of colour", and Ms Harris' Jamaican-Americaness morphed into "multicultural heritage". As I wrote in October, she's about as "black" as Barack Hussein Obama. 

Donald Harris became, and remains, something of a "missing link" in the Vice-President's biography. He was an international student from Jamaica when he met Shyamala Gopalan, a science student from India, at the University of California's Berkeley campus in 1962. In the hippy-dippy 60s, Berkeley was a hotbed of radicalism [Still is! Ed.], and the couple got to know each other at events promoting "African-American civil rights."

Donald Harris and Shyamala Gopalan married in 1963. Kamala born in 1964 and her sister Maya two years later. The couple divorced about seven years later, and custody of the girls was awarded to Ms Gopalan. A family member told a journalist with Canada's PostMedia that Mr Harris "was not around after the divorce." In fairness, it must be said that for Mr Harris to have involved himself in his daughters' upbringing would have meant following them and their mother to Canada and India.

In a  2003 interview, Kamala Harris told SF Weekly, "My father is a good guy, but we are not close." Donald Harris told an interviewer that the family court judge who gave custody to Ms Gopalan imposed a settlement based on "the false assumption that fathers cannot handle parenting." Nevertheless, he said, "I persisted, never giving up on my love for my children or reneging on my responsibilities as their father." 

Not during the election campaign though. At that time (the journalist reports), he told the New York Times, "The celebrity-seeking business is not my thing, and I have tried hard to keep out of it." Still, you'd think he would have wanted to be at the Inauguration, to see with his own eyes what his little girl had made of herself... with a little help from her friends.

Further reading: "Parsing the blackness of Kamala Harris", WWW 28/8/20.