Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

NY Times columnist, Frank Rich, has a really interesting take on Obama and why he's such a powerful candidate in this tumultuous election.

Obama doesn’t transcend race. He isn’t post-race. He is the latest chapter in the ever-unfurling American racial saga. It is an astonishing chapter. For most Americans, it seems as if Obama first came to dinner only yesterday. Should he win the White House on Tuesday, many will cheer and more than a few will cry as history moves inexorably forward.

A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words

The New Yorker's Obama cartoon has made national headlines. Everybody seems to be offended by it. Slate's Jack Shafer has a great article regarding the controversy and asking why everybody is getting their political panties in such a twist. He says:

"Calling on the press to protect the common man from the potential corruptions of satire is a strange, paternalistic assignment for any journalist to give his peers, but that appears to be what The New Yorker's detractors desire. I don't know whether to be crushed by that realization or elated by the notion that one of the most elite journals in the land has faith that Joe Sixpack can figure out a damned picture for himself.

How did we arrive at the point where a simple wisecrack like Blitt's causes such a hullabaloo? Has the public's taste for barbed drawings waned since the Paul Conrad, Herblock, Pat Oliphant, and Bill Mauldin heydays, or have the voices of the would-be bowdlerizers gotten stronger? Shall we don blinders and erect barriers so nobody is offended or misled?

Only weak thinkers fear strong images. The publication that convenes itself as a polite dinner party, serving only polenta and pureed peas, need not invite me to sup."