Callie Shell's photos of Obama

Intimate, telling, moving. Well worth a look. (Warning: many large images.)

Wassup 2008

Perspective

I needed to know: can Obama pick a fantasy team? So I asked him.

Howard Zinn

Understanding the other

Peter Sagal on understanding the Obama Conspiracy Theorists.

In the real world, Barack Obama seems like he’s going to be elected President. This, as unlikely as it might have seemed as little as two years ago, is easily explained: the Republicans have done a poor job running the country, have a very unpopular incumbent President, and our nation likes to switch parties about every 8 to 12 years. Plus, Obama is a charismatic politician who’s run a very competent campaign.

Nonetheless, this reality is intolerable to some, and they have created an alternative narrative. In this narrative, Obama is “a Marxisant radical who all his life has been mentored by, sat at the feet of, worshipped with, befriended, endorsed the philosophy of, funded and been in turn funded, politically promoted and supported by a nexus comprising black power anti-white racists, Jew-haters, revolutionary Marxists, unrepentant former terrorists and Chicago mobsters.” Once elected, presumably, will reveal himself to be the monster that he is, in the manner of Kang and Kodos in that classic 1996 Treehouse of Horror episode of The Simpsons.

A cultural moment

Meteor Blades talks about the Weather Underground and terror.