Obama's ex-girlfriends

The burdens of the job, fear of failure, the personal attacks, the inspection of your financial history...you know what would really terrify me of the prospect of being President? Knowing that people will be psycho-analyzing you in print for generations.

I'm sure the book is top-notch - the problem is probably more with how such works are marketed. What might be a two sentence anecdote meant to add layers to a larger point is reported like it IS the point.

 

Barry Obama: a kinda deep, a kinda emotionally distant guy who went to a good college. In other words, every straight twenty-something guy you'll meet in most parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn. So much so that they should teach about him in sex education for girls.

 

I can't wait to read the Africa chapter.

 

I read the excerpts and I think some folks on this thread have the wrong idea. I don't think there is anything in there intended to hound or disrespect the president. I think the relationships and the women's perspectives on them are helpful in giving us a better idea of who Obama is, or was. To me, he didn't come off badly at all. I mentioned the Waste Land stuff on another thread, when somebody trotted out the "Obama is a fraud, uses a TelePromptTer" BS.
To me, everything I've seen about The Bridge seems within the bounds of normal biography. I voted for Obama and will vote for him again.
I have a real hard time with the fact that there are people on here, back early in the thread, who seem to think it's a big deal that Obama dated WHITE WOMEN. Or they think that it will/should be a big deal with some portion of the voting populace. If those people do exist, they weren't ever going to vote for him anyway. Given his background, I'm pretty sure everybody knew this in 2008.

 

I'm curious, are you by chance a birther?

 

Two things, firstly, you realize that as many African-Americans will be upset by the news that Obama dated WHITE WOMEN as anyone else. Successful, African-American men dating white women is controversial among some in the African-American community.

Secondly, as Maureen Dowd (and David Maraniss) point out, at the time he dated these women, he was still defining himself racially. His dating WHITE WOMEN, and his own feelings about it, are a part of the journey he took in discovering himself.

That people think these women, the relationships they had with him, and the insights they bring, should have been left out of a biography is ridiculous.

Their inclusion in the book has nothing to do with Maraniss shouting, "he dated WHITE WOMEN".

 

Oh, heavens no.

Guess I need to sharpen my sarcasm font.

 

Don't let the facts get in the way of a good story...

 

The NYT had a strange story a couple days ago about how Obama's first book was going to be used against him. I'm looking for a link. Silver's blog is generally the only thing from the NYT that I read regularly, but I can't find it right now.

 

I just feel like I know nothing about Obama.

 

It's funny. When he ran in '08, some expressed concern that we didn't know enough about him.

They were mocked. Folks like Dick Whitman told us, "he wrote a book about himself!" "He talked about his own drug use!"

Well, that's great.

But, it was a book about discovering himself, and defining his won racial identity. And, at each turn, the people who helped him on this journey either don't exist, are composites, or are described differently than they are in real life. And, the "aha moments" are also made up.

So, how much do we know about him? Sure, we have a lot of facts, but the true insight into him, part of what was so unique about him, is false.

If he was just a best selling author, and not the President of the United States, his book would be in the same category as A Million Little Pieces.