Rebecca Walberg

Obama is a fascinating and perplexing character.  He seems to function as a screen onto which people can project whatever they want or need to see in a candidate: a post-racial messiah, a lacklustre Gen-Xer, a hard lefty, and so on.  Here is a well-written and intriguing assessment of Obama as Flake (not Fake, although a column could be written about that, too.)  My only quibble is that I don’t think it’s an accident that Obama didn’t publish a thing in Law Review and voted present so often; he was deliberately avoiding doing anything that might commit him to something that might cost him votes, whenever possible.  (Although this still makes the Trinity issue incomprehensible. I have yet to find a rational explanation for Trinity anywhere, although the “Wright as Authentic Black Father Figure” seems the most plausible.)

Summer is not conducive to voluminous writing.  Here are reviews of some thought-provoking books.  Fareed Zakaria, whom I reviewed here in the Winnipeg Free Press, is always worth a read.  Although his Post-American World isn’t 100% on the mark - he still subscribes to the “Iraq as eternal quagmire” meme, despite a rather dramatic turnaround in 2008 - it’s well worth reading.  Save the Males, also reviewed in the WFP, is a bit disappointing, since the topic is a rich one, and the writer is talented; all in all I expected better, although her treatment of the Jessica Lynch affair is provocative and thoughtful.  Much better, on the gender wars front, is Dr. Meg Meeker’s Boys Should be Boys, which I discussed here for the Institute of Marriage and Family, Canada.  Meeker’s earlier book on the medical perils of teen promiscuity was very valuable, and her thoughts on parenting boys are a useful addition to the burgeoning parenting section of the bookstore.