For the past six years, Vanity Fair has reserved its March issue to use as “The Hollywood Issue”, where the talented Vanity Fair photographers do a large portfolio of actors, actresses and Hollywood wheeler-dealer sorts. “The Hollywood Issue” has been a little blah the past few years, so it makes sense that the VF editors are trying to be innovative, by putting the new president on the cover with a large portfolio of his new administration inside. Don’t get too worked up – the VF editors also include a Hollywood portfolio.

It’s no secret that Barack Obama has a bunch of half-siblings. He’s always said that the relation he’s closest to is his sister Maya Soterio. President Obama also has several half-siblings from his father’s side of the family, many of whom still live in Kenya. One of these half-brothers, George Obama, was arrested over the weekend for drug possession – of one joint. The charges were dropped hours later, but the whole story of the arrest is coming out.

All charges against George Obama, half-brother to U.S. President Barack Obama, have been dropped after his arrest in a drug raid, according to police in Kenya.

He was released on Saturday hours later, police added. Obama was arrested in a Nairobi slum, and he was picked up with people who possessed marijuana, said police spokesman Eric Kiraithe.

“Being found with people who are in possession of cannabis is a petty offense,” Kiraithe said. Earlier, police had told CNN that Obama had been arrested for possessing cannabis and resisting arrest, which can carry a sentence of up to a year in jail or hefty fines.

“Police in Kenya do not look at criminals in light of associations with relatives,” Kiraithe said.

Obama and the president barely know each other, though they have met. George Obama was one of the few people closely related to the president who did not attend the inauguration in Washington.

In his memoir, “Dreams from My Father,” Barack Obama describes meeting George as a “painful affair.” His trip to Kenya meant meeting family he had never known.

Barack Obama Sr. died in a car accident when George was 6 months old. And like his half brother, George hardly knew his father. George was his father’s last child and had not been aware of his famous half brother until he rose to prominence in the Democratic primaries last year.

Unlike his grandmother in Kogela, in western Kenya, George Obama received little attention from the media until reports about him surfaced in August 2008. The reports sprung from an Italian Vanity Fair article saying George Obama lived in a shack and was “earning less than a dollar a day.”

The reports left George Obama angry. “I was brought up well. I live well even now,” he said. “The magazines, they have exaggerated everything.”

Obama, who is in his mid-20s, said at the time that he was learning to become a mechanic and was active in youth groups in Huruma. He said he tries to help the community as much as he can.

[From CNN]

George Obama sounds like a very proud man. I can’t imagine the range of emotions he must have felt when he found out his half-brother is the President of the United States. As a result, everything anybody in the extended Obama family does over the next four – and possibly eight – years will make international news.

Picture note by JayBird: This isn’t directly related, but I thought this was really beautiful. The Committee for African-American History Observances Quilters and volunteers took 10 (very harried) days to construct this gorgeous Michelle Obama History Quilt, which is now at The Historical Society of Washington, D.C. Images thanks to Newscom.