The Love Song Of J. Alfred Obama

Elliot was wrong--November is the cruelest month: In an election year, it messes up all the months leading up to it.

Legal Insurrection writes about The truest form of love known to mankind, which in this case is "when a Senior Editor of The New Republic pens a guest column in The NY Times about young Obama, Young Obama’s Poetic Politics":

One of the things that most excited writers and intellectuals about Obama the candidate in 2008 was his literary sensibility. In her essay “Speaking in Tongues,” the novelist Zadie Smith enthused about Mr. Obama’s ability, in his memoir, to convincingly channel a wide range of voices: “Obama can do young Jewish male, black old lady from the South Side, white woman from Kansas,” and on and on. This gives him something in common with the author of “The Waste Land,” that chorus of disparate characters, whose working title was “He Do the Police in Different Voices.”

While Jacobson deals with this attempt to revisit Obama's "intellectualism," what struck me was the quote from Smith who admires Obama's ability

to convincingly channel a wide range of voices: “Obama can do young Jewish male, black old lady from the South Side, white woman from Kansas,” and on and on.

So we are supposed to admire Obama's ability to put on an act--to fake empathy with the views and feelings of other people, to do young Jewish male etc and do it convincingly?

The more Obama's supporters look for wonderful things about him to admire, the more I am left cold--and unsettled.

Technorati Tag: Obama and Election 2012.