Nelson Mandela

Chris Matthews, on Tuesday's Hardball, invited on Time editor and Nelson Mandela biographer Richard Stengel to clarify his comparisons of Mandela to Barack Obama as the MSNBC host prodded him to expound on the "kerfuffle" that "will arouse some anxiety on the right." After Matthews recited a quote from the book, that Obama had achieved "a Mandela-like temperament without the long years of sacrifice" the Hardball host asked how that was possible - to which Stengel offered "I don't how to explain it. It's DNA, it's genetics. I don't really know," as seen in the following exchange:

CHRIS MATTHEWS: I want to ask you about a kerfuffle that you've already aroused here. Here's some language from your book that will arouse some anxiety on the right, some interest on the left and perhaps some, well we'll see in the middle. Here you are comparing Nelson Mandela to President Obama. You write, "While it took twenty-seven years in prison to mold the Nelson Mandela we know, the forty-eight-year-old American president seems to have achieved a Mandela-like temperament without the long years of sacrifice. While Mandela's world view was forged in the cauldron of racial politics, Obama is creating a post-racial political model. Whatever Mandela may or may not think of the new American president, Obama is in many ways his true successor on the world stage." The right wing hates that, because they hate it. Your thoughts? Explain.

In early April, Times Executive Editor Bill Keller (photo courtesy of the New York Times) discussed his recent book "The Tree Shaker: The Story of Nelson Mandela," a children's book on the life of the South African leader Nelson, on the Times' "Ask A Reporter" site.

The project is aimed at schoolchildren, who submit questions to selected Times reporters about the job of reporting. The reporters generally respond with bland, follow-your-dreams stuff to the audience of aspiring journalists or curious students, but Keller's response to one student's question might raise some eyebrows.

A New York City 12th grader asked Keller:

"What do you think of the analogy between apartheid South Africa and Israel-Palestine? I remember hearing about a lot of controversy last year regarding Jimmy Carter's book, 'Peace Not Apartheid.'"

Keller responded in a post dated April 4 by saying that one has to be careful with analogies, but also suggested that that one had some validity: