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[JrBaconCheeseburger]

I was way more ambitious and achieved that dream at like 21 or something. I've yet to start campaigning for PAX.

I snuck in when 18.

Good times.

 

[HarryKS]

Sheila Miyoshi Jager - That's a strong name actually.

Almost Max Power strong.

 

[Gattsu25]

For the new page.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/01/...making-of-barack-obama-david-garrow.html?_r=0

“Rising Star,” the voluminous 1,460-page biography of Barack Obama by David J. Garrow, is a dreary slog of a read: a bloated, tedious and — given its highly intemperate epilogue — ill-considered book that is in desperate need of editing, and way more exhausting than exhaustive.

Instead, Garrow’s epilogue delivers a crude screed against Obama the president and Obama the man, filled with bald assertions and coy half-truths. He suggests that Obama’s presidency was a long string of failures and disappointments and that “behind the scenes, many Democrats were just as eager for Barack to exit the White House as he himself now seemed,” when, in fact, he left office as one of the most popular presidents in recent decades.

It’s odd that Garrow should seize on one former lover’s anger and hurt, and try to turn them into a Rosebud-like key to the former president’s life, referring to her repeatedly in his epilogue. He even tries to turn her perception — about Obama’s having willed himself into being — into a pejorative, when the act of self-invention, as other biographers have noted, was the enterprising and existential act of a young man who essentially had been abandoned by both his black father and white mother, and who found himself caught between cultures and trying, as he wrote in “Dreams,” “to raise myself to be a black man in America.”

I always found it funny that people actually believed his memoirs were authentic. Some interesting stuff in it, but an obvious advertisement and PR stunt, nor baring his soul or any of that shit.

This is really interesting, and a bit disillusioning, but it also explains so much.

I've said it before, he's been too concerned with his legacy, and it explains how he abandoned his racial justice warrior attitude, explains why he was so willing to be such a hawk, he was always much more conservative than he pretended, as his Harvard days prove.

This is amazing stuff. To be president, I guess, you have to be a ruthless ambitious fraud. Or just a dim witted and lucky like Dubya, but mostly just an ambitious conman.

Right. So the memoir is an "advertisement and PR stunt" but this biography designed to sell units is inherently a bastion of objective truth and insight?

Indeed, this entire book suffers from a poor sense of proportion. Garrow adds nothing to our understanding of Obama’s intellectual evolution during his years at Columbia, or the role that the civil rights movement played in shaping his political consciousness and ideals. (Curious, given that Garrow, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1987 for his book on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “Bearing the Cross.”) And yet Garrow prattles on for pages about legislation Obama worked on in the Illinois State Senate, and about discussions in law school classes he attended or taught. The entire first chapter of the book is devoted to examining the social and political landscape of Chicago’s South Side in the early 1980s before Obama arrived to work there, but Obama’s 2008 campaign and two terms in the White House are compressed into a 50-odd-page epilogue.

Perhaps, as the title “Rising Star” indicates, this book is meant to focus only on Obama’s early years, but in that case, the epilogue — with the snarky title of “The President Did Not Attend, as He Was Golfing” — seems even more inexplicable.

Whereas the rest of the book is written in dry, largely uninflected prose, the epilogue — which almost reads like a Republican attack ad — devolves into a condescending diatribe unworthy of a serious historian. It consists mainly of a string of negative quotations about Obama’s presidency and temperament, many plucked out of context from articles and books by journalists and commentators, or extracted from disillusioned former friends or supporters. There is no considered weighing of the record, no real recognition of the achievements of Obama’s two terms in office (including his handling of the financial crisis that he inherited and passing Obamacare). Nor is there any useful explication of the policy decisions (like flip-flopping on Syria, and failing to close a deal enabling a sizable number of American forces to remain in Iraq beyond 2011) that have elicited sustained criticism from both government insiders and outside experts.

Garrow takes Obama to task for his lack of “bipartisan outreach” with Republican members of Congress, but doesn’t tell the other side of the story — namely, the Republicans’ deliberate strategy of obstructionism throughout Obama’s tenure in office.

This is laughably stupid.

It’s odd that Garrow should seize on one former lover’s anger and hurt, and try to turn them into a Rosebud-like key to the former president’s life, referring to her repeatedly in his epilogue. He even tries to turn her perception — about Obama’s having willed himself into being — into a pejorative, when the act of self-invention, as other biographers have noted, was the enterprising and existential act of a young man who essentially had been abandoned by both his black father and white mother, and who found himself caught between cultures and trying, as he wrote in “Dreams,” “to raise myself to be a black man in America.”

This is such an obviously flawed approach, taking a bitter ex's perceptions and projecting them all over the rest of Obama's life.

This entire book is a hit piece.

 

[Elandyll]

Man who achieved greatness was aiming for it since a young age, and had to work hard and make personal sacrifices for it. Also, it impacted his personal relations.

OK

 

[Aaronology]

For the new page.






This entire book is a hit piece.

Yikes.

 

[Iksenpets]

Also, for broader context, I would check out the NYT review of this biography, which pans it for being a giant Obama hit-piece that tries to force the lens of this one bitter ex who knew him for a few years in college onto everything.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/...star-making-of-barack-obama-david-garrow.html

Edit: Oops, someone already got there.

 

[Byakuya769]

Is the ex actuallly bitter? I never got that sense from any other interview from her before this hack job.

 

[bionic77]

There is literally nothing Obama can do that won't be hated by a large percentage of this country. If he worked in a leper colony the right would say it was from a guilty conscience or that he was whoring for attention.

And on the other hand those same people will make any excuse for Trump.

 

[shintoki]

Would Obama's career have been where he was at in 07-08 with a perceived white wife? Probably not. For discussions sake let's say he still makes it to the primaries... Clinton still had the Black vote. Obama had to earn it, prove he could get the nomination before Blacks left Clinton. That would have been an uphill battle. Interracial marriage Obama would have seen a big drop in support from Black women & Liberal and moderate white males IMO. He would have to attempt to soften the blow and remind the public that his wife is Asian and not just white. Clinton and the media would have race trolled the marriage and he may not have recovered from that.

Maybe he's talented enough to have weathered that storm but I think his presidency would have came later than 08, if not never.

I do believe that is a fair assumption. Not focusing on the 08 race, but it would have made it harder for him to gain ground in Chicago and Illinois. Most likely delaying the rest and not being ready for the bid in 08. He would of been attacked from both sides more.

But, I also do believe that he is more than talented and specifically charismatic enough to beat anything thrown at him. Even with the white wife, I still wouldn't see him losing against Clinton, who while having the backing and record. Is not particularly a charismatic individual.

 

[Raiden]

do you think Obama would have became president with a white wife?

Yes. Consider the amount of dumbass voters the US has you can bet your ass more white people would have voted Obama because he has a white wife.

 

[Linkura]

So many fucking people get engaged to someone, break off the engagement, and marry somewhere else. Who fucking cares??