Home pagePress CenterIn the Media Mark Bellamy, a senior fellow in residence with the CSIS Africa Program, was quoted by Slate.com, "Obama Gets Dressed."
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Mark Bellamy, a senior fellow in residence with the CSIS Africa Program, was quoted by Slate.com, "Obama Gets Dressed."
In case you were growing tired of fights over NAFTA, lofty rhetoric, and debates, the Democrats have a new spat du jour for you. Today, the Drudge Report posted a big, fat headline that howled, “Clinton staffers circulate ‘dressed’ Obama.” Accompanying the headline was a picture of Obama on a diplomatic trip to Kenya in 2006, wearing some type of traditional dress of the area—complete with a turban-looking headdress.
The picture was taken while Obama was in Wajir, a rural desert area in the northeast of Kenya. I spoke with Mark Bellamy, a former ambassador to Kenya and a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who told me that Wajir is a pastoral town of about 5,000 people—almost all of whom are Muslim. Bellamy—who hasn’t declared his preference in the presidential race—didn’t recognize the “outfit” but said it wasn’t Islamic garb. He thought it was probably some sort of traditional Somali-Kenyan dress and that the people hosting Obama offered it to him as a sign of hospitality. “Wherever I travel I get dressed up in same way,” he said, "out of consideration for the hosts."
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