Posted on 11/20/2009 11:49:11 AM PST by SeekAndFind
A few weeks back, the new head of the National Endowment for the Arts, Rocco Landesman, said of Barack Obama, "This is the first president that actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt and arguably the first to write them really well since Lincoln."
Landesman was not alone in his praise. This month's GQ has a faux-exhaustive article on "the untold story of the first man since Teddy Roosevelt to serve as author in chief."
In truth, however, if Teddy Roosevelt came back to life today, he would find that he would have much more in common with Sarah Palin than Barack Obama, both as a fellow adventurer and as a fellow writer.
I am not being ironic here: Palin's new memoir, "Going Rogue," is superior to the 1995 memoir that made Obama's reputation, "Dreams From My Father."
A clue as to why can be found in one choice moment from "Dreams."
At the time, 1988, community organizer Obama was contemplating law school, and he announced his potential choices as "Harvard, Yale, Stanford."
What makes any narrative compelling is when the protagonist confronts obstacles and overcomes them through force of will and character.
But when a mediocre student with LSAT scores too humble to reveal can casually limit his law school choices to Harvard, Stanford and Yale, the reader winces.
It is as if the good witch told Dorothy to click her heels together on day one and skip the damn yellow brick road. There is no drama here.
In fact, Obama's career has been greased by affirmative action and its bastard offspring "diversity" from prep school on.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
The author contrasts Palin’s book with Obama’s....
Palin, like Obama, an unusual duck from an outlier state, also played basketball. She writes not about her slights, however, but about the accomplishment of her team.
.....
Unlike Obama, Palin has admitted to having a collaborator. Whoever put pen to page, however, did so in Palin’s voice. There is not a sentence of the book she could not have written.
Palin’s book is not great art, but her story is captivating and humbly told. As a woman in a series of historically male professions sports journalism, commercial fishing, Alaska politics she actually does overcome genuine resistance to achieve unlikely success.
Along the way, Palin never whines. She charms. She also appreciates and enthuses. Her evocations of small-town Alaska life and big-sky Alaska adventure cheer the soul. There is no equivalent appreciation of anything in “Dreams.”
How could a person know the DREAMS of his father, if he only spent 1 week with him in his entire life? And the half brother says the dad was a drunk..a man chaser.
do we know what his LSAT score was?
Teddy Roosevelt was a bada**, intellectual, and just all around man’s man. Obama MIGHT have enough of these qualities to fit in Teddy’s pinkie toe. On one foot.
The events in 'Dreams of his father' were just as true as the events seen in the movie 'Roots'.
And still does, as do preferential contracts and loans granted to so-called minority businesses.
I haven’t read “Dreams” but I understand that Bill Ayers wrote a pretty good book...?
Don’t forget wife beater.
Sarah Palin appreciates the life her parents and God gave her. She’s a product of steady, loving upbringing, a never give up attitude and be constant in your love of family, friends and country.
Nobama, on the other hand, was a throw away child, a mother, too busy for him, a father who didn’t want the responsibility of raising him. He ended up with his grandparents. His grandfather really didn’t have much interest in him, so found a mentor to set his path. The mentor, a philanderer with a foul mouth and drinking buddy of the grandfather. It’s not to the father, he never knew, but to the mother who also threw him away, that nobama has turned his “get even” attitude towards. She was caucasian a race he decided he didn’t want to be at age 12, so he chose the race, arab with a smidgen of negro, of his run away father. So now we know the lack of appreciation this man has for family and country. He truly is a man APART from us, the citizens of America.
Sarah Palin appreciates the life her parents and God gave her. She’s a product of steady, loving upbringing, a never give up attitude and be constant in your love of family, friends and country.
Nobama, on the other hand, was a throw away child, a mother, too busy for him, a father who didn’t want the responsibility of raising him. He ended up with his grandparents. His grandfather really didn’t have much interest in him, so found a mentor to set his path. The mentor, a philanderer with a foul mouth and drinking buddy of the grandfather. It’s not to the father, he never knew, but to the mother who also threw him away, that nobama has turned his “get even” attitude towards. She was caucasian a race he decided he didn’t want to be at age 12, so he chose the race, arab with a smidgen of negro, of his run away father. So now we know the lack of appreciation this man has for family and country. He truly is a man APART from us, the citizens of America.
UHG OH, sorry for the double post.
I read some time ago that Barack Obama, Sr., was killed in an accident while driving drunk (and it was not his first accident while driving drunk).
We celebrate those who grew up hard and overcame the destructive influences of their youth to become men and women of valor and character. Those who turned their struggle into hatred, vulgarity, and getting even are pitied. Acheving power and prestige toward bitter ends is vile. Comparing Palin and Obama requires peering into a Dark Crystal where saints and sinners merge.
Deserved to be repeated...
An author who actually had friends and associates and a history before she took office.
It wasn't written by a terrorist?
Last I heard, they can't even find anyone who was a classmate at Columbia where he earned, or was given, his B.S. in political science.
Even Al Freaken Gore allowed us to see his transcripts.
Barry spent several years in Hawaii with his father Frank Marshall Davis.
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