Oh dear. What has been seen cannot be unseen.
https://twitter.com/#!/RichardLui/status/197741803309514753
Feast your eyes on this; beware of the steam emanating off the page!
The letters between McNear and Obama centered around philosophy and literature.
“Remember how I said there’s a certain kind of conservatism which I respect more than bourgeois liberalism — [T.S.] Eliot is of this type,” Obama wrote in one letter to McNear. “Of course, the dichotomy he maintains is reactionary, but it’s due to a deep fatalism, not ignorance. And this fatalism is born out of the relation between fertility and death, which I touched on in my last letter — life feeds on itself. A fatalism I share with the western tradition at times. You seem surprised at Eliot’s irreconcilable ambivalence; don’t you share this ambivalence yourself, Alex?”
Hot? How existential of him! Even his alleged “love letters” are pretentious.
No word yet if the letters were to real women or his usual “composite” girlfriends. President Obama makes stuff up? Who would have thunk it?! It totally happened in band camp. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
https://twitter.com/#!/ariyoung/status/197742263156211712
One of the more mysterious characters from President Obama’s 1995 autobiography Dreams From My Father is the so-called ‘New York girlfriend.’ Obama never referred to her by name, or even by psuedonym, but he describes her appearance, her voice, and her mannerisms in specific detail.
But Obama has now told biographer David Maraniss that the ‘New York girlfriend’ was actually a composite character, based off of multiple girlfriends he had both in New York City and in Chicago.
Also no word on whether the “composite girlfriend” is actually Obama himself.
https://twitter.com/#!/SonnyBunch/status/197723509605154816
Of course, the letters are now being pegged as a “dog whistle” for racists!!!111
https://twitter.com/#!/JeffersonObama/status/197725693914787840
But the sane see it as a whistle to mock. Because, hilarious. Mock. Mock like the wind!
https://twitter.com/#!/NathanWurtzel/status/197730618044448768
https://twitter.com/#!/TPCarney/status/197730210421030912
https://twitter.com/#!/samyoungman/status/197730022012891137
https://twitter.com/#!/TPCarney/status/197729735034413056
https://twitter.com/#!/feliciasonmez/status/197732596480884737
https://twitter.com/#!/iowahawkblog/status/197738992245026817
https://twitter.com/#!/Doc_0/status/197741144912834560
https://twitter.com/#!/ArtbyAVVOHS/status/197740125806010369
https://twitter.com/#!/BuzzFeedAndrew/status/197744853323481088
https://twitter.com/#!/IKIDYOUNOT/status/197744475978731522
Sheesh, someone needs to check the White House expense reports for significant outlays for “real dolls.”
Paging Sandra Fluke!
https://twitter.com/#!/RickSheridan/status/197743080198242304
At least “Dreams from my Father” is finally being looked at (thanks to Jim Treacher) after years of just fawning obedience from the press.
https://twitter.com/#!/mattklewis/status/197729431417143296
https://twitter.com/#!/MikeBates/status/197722637932310528
Had they paid attention to any of it earlier, they would have known the “composite girlfriend” story ages ago.
https://twitter.com/#!/DylanByers/statuses/197746085324783617
As usual, the press just took anything Obama said as gospel without question. It’s in his book? It must be totally true and not manufactured made-up nonsense!
UPDATE: In the reissue of “Dreams from My Father,” Obama writes in the introduction that “some of the characters that appear are composites of people I’ve known.”
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this blog post stated that Obama had acknolwedged using composite characters in the reissue. In fact, Obama acknolwedged the use of composite characters in the first edition of the book.
Seems like this should have been an issue before, say, during the 2008 election? Instead of just swoonily quoting from it and gushing.
Hey, it’s a start. Happy warriors can take up the slack, as usual.
Related: NRO’s Jonah Goldberg schools Washington Post’s Ezra Klein, Left misses point
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