Best of Authors

I love authors. As I told Whitters tonight, they are my movie stars.

From Michael Chabon*, author of so many books you should read - Wonder Boys, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, The Yiddish Policeman's Union:

"One of the things that had served to discourage me over the course of the primary season was a general acceptance of the premise that oratory was a specious, feckless, inherently untrustworthy art. The Obama camp would rightly dispute the charge of offering only “pretty words,” but they never seemed to argue the larger truth: that ultimately words were all we had; that writing and oratory, argument and persuasion, were the root of democracy; that words can kill, or save us; something along those lines. “You can only say what you can first imagine,” as I heard Tobias Wolff (the short-story master, not the Obama campaign adviser) explain to a group of people at an Obama fund-raiser. It was a mark of Obama’s fitness to lead, to me at least, that he possessed sufficient natural reserves of imagination to kick oratorical ass." (via The Morning News)

*Holy shit, apparently he was at the convention. AND NOBODY TOLD ME. If you hear that Dave Eggers was there, just make sure I don't find out.

Best of Elsewhere

The people at The Morning News, who bring me the Tournament of Books every March, also share my political views. And probably yours, too.

"...not only do regular people not run for president, they shouldn’t run for president. Sarah Palin’s appeal apparently rests on her being just like us, but why on Earth would we want to elect someone just like us? Have you seen us?"