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.

Rather like a story we've read before

I have no interest in Hip Hop and the shooting death of Tupac Shakur, but I do care about what happens to our media, journalists and Truth. Read the sad, sad story at Smoking Gun about how a high esteemed reporter from the LA Times, Chuck Philips (who incidentally hasn't been fired and is still active) fell for phony FBI documents created by a convict who also lived in a fantasy world about what a big shot he was on the Hip Hop scene.

I'm no hot shot, award winning journalist, but if a 31 year old, white convict who has spent most of his adult life in prison told me in 2008 that in 1994 he was wheeling and dealing with black hip hop artists--with deals that would go back to when he was even younger, I think I could have subtracted 14 from 31 and guessed that performers worth millions probably weren't linking up with 17 year old teen-agers. Come on!

Don't blame Obama for Nappy Roots

Sure, they appeared together at a Democratic fund raiser, and Obama took no offense then at their lyrics or their name then. They are quite successful and have had this name for over a decade. It's just considered a bit edgy--or was back in the 90s. Now it's just old news. It's sort of like gays using the word queers or women using the word chicks or babes. Or it was old news until the Imus double standard. This is different. . .

"He [Imus] didn't just cross the line," Mr. Obama said in an interview with ABC News. "He fed into some of the worst stereotypes that my two young daughters are having to deal with today in America." [NYT via Taranto in OpinionJournal.]

In the first case, he was just another Democrat raising funds trying to appeal to the with-it and young. In the second, he's an African American running catch-up in the me-too race with Jesse who was chasing Al.