In the run-up to Barack Obama's inauguration, the New York Times has run several articles praising the President-elect's "eloquence," the most visible being Monday's front-page story by the paper's lead book critic (and prominent Bush-basher) Michiko Kakutani, "From Books, New President Found Voice," who praised Obama for...reading:
In college, as he was getting involved in protests against the apartheid government in South Africa, Barack Obama noticed, he has written, "that people had begun to listen to my opinions." Words, the young Mr. Obama realized, had the power "to transform": "with the right words everything could change -- South Africa, the lives of ghetto kids just a few miles away, my own tenuous place in the world."
Much has been made of Mr. Obama's eloquence -- his ability to use words in his speeches to persuade and uplift and inspire. But his appreciation of the magic of language and his ardent love of reading have not only endowed him with a rare ability to communicate his ideas to millions of Americans while contextualizing complex ideas about race and religion, they have also shaped his sense of who he is and his apprehension of the world.
Kakutani set up an unfavorable contrast of President Bush's reading habits with Obama's. (Though it's a marvel that Kakutani admits Bush reads at all.)
Obama actually gets credit for a "love of fiction and poetry," one that has "imbued him with a tragic sense of history and a sense of the ambiguities of the human condition," as opposed to Bush's "prescriptive" reading, which has provided him only a black-and-white "Manichean view of the world." (That's bad.)
His predecessor, George W. Bush, in contrast, tended to race through books in competitions with Karl Rove (who recently boasted that he beat the president by reading 110 books to Mr. Bush's 95 in 2006), or passionately embrace an author's thesis as an idée fixe. Mr. Bush and many of his aides favored prescriptive books -- Natan Sharansky's "Case for Democracy," which pressed the case for promoting democracy around the world, say, or Eliot A. Cohen's "Supreme Command," which argued that political strategy should drive military strategy. Mr. Obama, on the other hand, has tended to look to non-ideological histories and philosophical works that address complex problems without any easy solutions, like Reinhold Niebuhr's writings, which emphasize the ambivalent nature of human beings and the dangers of willful innocence and infallibility.
What's more, Mr. Obama's love of fiction and poetry -- Shakespeare's plays, Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick" and Marilynne Robinson‘s "Gilead" are mentioned on his Facebook page, along with the Bible, Lincoln's collected writings and Emerson's "Self Reliance" -- has not only given him a heightened awareness of language. It has also imbued him with a tragic sense of history and a sense of the ambiguities of the human condition quite unlike the Manichean view of the world so often invoked by Mr. Bush.
How convenient for Kakutani that Bush and Obama's reading matter drop so neatly into pre-formed ideological categories that are flattering to liberals.
—Clay Waters is the director of Times Watch, an MRC project tracking the New York Times.
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Wow, even Jesus didn't read and walk on water at the same time.
January 19, 2009 - 16:26 ET by jazboThose who believe in nothing will believe anything.
LOL
January 19, 2009 - 16:34 ET by 10ksnookerHeck, I didn't know he could read. Since all his writings seemed to have vaporised.
Reading yes
January 19, 2009 - 20:36 ET by NorthCoasterWriting in invisible ink apparently. I wonder if anything will mysteriously show up after the inaguaration or if 4-8 years from now his writings surface.
Hey, I heard on the news tonight that Bill Ayers was refused entry into Canada. He was supposed to speak at a program about school improvement.
I don't think reading Marx via teleprompter actually counts.
January 19, 2009 - 16:42 ET by R D Helm-Dave
“Them that’s going get on the wagon. Them that ain’t get out of the way.” -While there is still time.
Wow, just wow.
January 19, 2009 - 16:51 ET by UpNorth" Eliot A. Cohen's "Supreme Command," which argued that political strategy should drive military strategy". Yeah, that idea worked out so well for us during Clinton's terms. Wonder what O is gonna do to distract everyone when things don't go his way? Maybe he'll come on TV and read poetry to us, or selected Shakespeare plays.
Well, quit lolling around with books
January 19, 2009 - 17:19 ET by StarAZSorry--in a few hrs, he won't have the "real" president to fall back on and blame, so he better put down the high-toned bedside material and get to work!
And lemme guess - Obama
January 19, 2009 - 17:38 ET by SickofLibsAnd lemme guess - Obama plays chess against himself and never loses.
Bush, on the other hand, has never won a game of Candyland in his entire life.
He can read?
January 19, 2009 - 17:44 ET by Lord ErondSuch eloquence prompted by going "Uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh" when the teleprompter breaks down.
OMG, isn't there some cure for liberalism? I mean, it's a hideous thing to see idiots afflicted with liberalism....
"What you can not enforce, do not command" -Sophocles-
"What's more, Mr. Obama's
January 19, 2009 - 17:52 ET by"What's more, Mr. Obama's love of fiction and poetry -- Shakespeare's plays, Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick" and Marilynne Robinson‘s "Gilead" are mentioned on his Facebook page, along with the Bible, Lincoln's collected writings and Emerson's "Self Reliance" --"
Recently Obama said that he found acceptance for homosexual relationships in the SERMON ON THE MOUNT. More specifically in the "beatitudes"! http://www.bpnews.ne...
And when asked his opinion on Jesus declaring himself to be the "Way the Truth and the Life" and the statement no man comes to the Father except through me," it, according to Barack, "All depends on how this verse is heard". http://foxforum.blog...
Dunno about you, but when I hear, "no man makes it without Me", I tend to think it means, NO MAN MAKES IT WITHOUT ME, but that's just me.
The following is excerpted from Cal Thomas' article on Obama's "religion". By the way this article and ALL of the MANY articles wherein Obama makes a mockery of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ by declaring it unnecessary, HAVE ALL BEEN REMOVED FROM GOOGLE! Thanks to the anti-censorship liberals! You can still "yahoo" them, however.
"An exception is Chicago Sun-Times columnist Cathleen Falsani, who interviewed Obama in 2004 for her book, “The God Factor: Inside the Spiritual Lives of Public People “and asked him specific questions about his religious beliefs.
“I’m rooted in the Christian tradition,” said Obama, who has declared himself a Christian. But then he adds something that most Christians will see as universalism: “I believe there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people.”
Falsani correctly brings up John 14:6 (and how many journalists would know such a verse, much less ask a question based on it?) in which Jesus says of Himself, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” That sounds pretty exclusive, but Obama says it depends on how this verse is heard. According to Falsani, Obama thinks that “all people of faith — Christians, Jews, Muslims, animists, everyone — know the same God.” (her words)
If that is so, Jesus wasted his time coming to Earth and he certainly did not have to suffer the pain of rejection and crucifixion if there are ways to God other than through Himself."
Obama did not opine on any other way to hear , "no one gets to the Father except through me," that would make it more "inclusive".
So after his "reading" of the bible, this "christian" believes that despite Christ's assertion to the contrary, that Jesus is not the only way to heaven. AND he finds acceptance of homosexual SODOMY in the BEATITUDES!!!!
If his reading comprehension of these other books is EVEN REMOTELY close to his comprehension of the bible, he probably thinks "Moby-Dick" is about the sex life of a rock star.
Acts
January 19, 2009 - 20:43 ET by NorthCoasterMoby ........ was a story of homosexual love wasn't it? And the beatitudes tell us that even the weakest can find the love of a "god"? ----just kidding.
Never quite read it that way.