Obama's Reading List

Where is it? The media ridiculed President Bush for being such a dunce--until they learned about his reading list which was primarily history, biography and political science, but included Camus. Then the non-reading reporters chastized him for not reading topics more liberal, or not a different title by an author. Here's the stunned Richard Cohen of WaPo:

"Bush read 95 books in 2006 alone. In 2007, he read 51 books and as of last week, he had read 40 in 2008. . . [Karl] Rove appreciates that he's written a caricature-buster. "In the 35 years I've known George W. Bush, he's always had a book nearby," he writes. "He plays up being a good ol' boy from Midland, Texas, but he was a history major at Yale and graduated from Harvard Business School. You don't make it through either unless you are a reader.""

So today we get "Obama's Rap Palatte " and Thomas Chatterton Williams questions why he's being praised for his "updated" selection, referring back to a Rolling Stones article, although even 2008 articles featured his i-pod so he'd appear "with-it."

Hip-Hop. Jay-Z, little Nas and Lil Wayne, to name three. Rapping about pornography and drugs, violence and murder, and of course, dissing women.

But yes, bloggers say Obama does read. (I googled it), although not as much or as widely as Bush. He can list his favorites (including his own titles) and his current reads, which don't overly impress me, but hey, it's better than my TBR list. But I refuse to listen to music that disses women and for a wife and 2 daughters, it's not a good idea for him either.



Thomas Chatterton Williams wrote Losing my Cool about how reading helped him escape many of the negative aspects of black culture.