Obama, in a "letter to one of his romantic partners"..

[Laura PourMeADrink]

http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/05/the-young-obama-literary-critic-122253.html

By BYRON TAU | 5/2/12 10:14 AM EDT
Vanity Fair excerpts some of David Maraniss forthcoming Obama biography, exploring the future president's time in New York and his relationship with two women as the young Barack Obama struggled with race, identity and his purpose in life.

In this letter to one of his romantic partners, Obama holds forth on literature — praising author T.S. Eliot's "conservatism" and saying he respects it more than some "bourgeois liberalism."

Obama:

I haven’t read “The Waste Land” for a year, and I never did bother to check all the footnotes. But I will hazard these statements—Eliot contains the same ecstatic vision which runs from Münzer to Yeats. However, he retains a grounding in the social reality/order of his time. Facing what he perceives as a choice between ecstatic chaos and lifeless mechanistic order, he accedes to maintaining a separation of asexual purity and brutal sexual reality. And he wears a stoical face before this. Read his essay on Tradition and the Individual Talent, as well as Four Quartets, when he’s less concerned with depicting moribund Europe, to catch a sense of what I speak. Remember how I said there’s a certain kind of conservatism which I respect more than bourgeois liberalism—Eliot is of this type. Of course, the dichotomy he maintains is reactionary, but it’s due to a deep fatalism, not ignorance. (Counter him with Yeats or Pound, who, arising from the same milieu, opted to support Hitler and Mussolini.) 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?

[MADem]

1. Ooooooooooooooh!!!! That'll piss off the wingnuts!

College is the time when smart kids explore. Obama was a smart kid.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

6. Ha....This sounds exactly like things I wrote in college

[font size = 6] NOT

[cbdo2007]

30. I'm not sure if this OP was supposed to be pro-Obama or anti-Obama....

I liked it and think it displays our President as a great thinker and philosopher.

[MADem]

31. Well, it's from Politico and they're assholes, but I posted a link to the VF article from which it

came over in good reads--and the article, in the full context, is a good read.

Anyone wanting an "Ah HA" moment out of this snippet is going to be very frustrated, indeed.

[GoCubsGo]

40. You betcha!

They'll be pissed off because he uses lots of big words, and they won't be able to understand any of it.

[sufrommich]

2. Can anyone imagine Dubya writing a

paragraph like that?

[alcibiades_mystery]

4. ROFL

That literally made me laugh out loud.

[malaise]

9. DUzy

[1StrongBlackMan]

12. I couldn't ...

imagine bush writing a single sentence contained in that letter.

[Aristus]

56. "Laura,

I tryed to read this T.S. Eliot guy, but I cudden't git past the whole T.S. part. I mean whaddaya call him, anyways? "Hi T!" heh-heh, heh-heh, heh-heh. Anyways, The whole stuffed men thing was kinda stupid. If ya put somethin' inside of 'em, them they wudden be hollow no more would they? Heh-heh, heh-heh, heh-heh. If I was t'end the world, you dang sure I'd end it with a bang, if you know what I mean! Heh-heh, heh-heh, heh-heh!

Yours awesomely,

George"

[Swede]

13. Dear Laura,

Roses are red
and so is bacon
poems are hard.........

[Laura PourMeADrink]

17. +1

[sufrommich]

18. lol. nt

[lumberjack_jeff]

19. LOL! n/t

[uponit7771]

23. +1

[lamp_shade]

26. Pomes... that's "pomes" are hard (Bullwinkle T. Moose).

[Whisp]

27. LOL!!!

[ProSense]

48. .

[yellowcanine]

22. I am sure Mitt wrote stuff just as deep on Ayn Rand.

[Poll_Blind]

24. Ha! More like "Thanks for getting the towel." nt

PB

[MADem]

32. Ha ha ha!

I don't think he could carry off a single sentence of that caliber!

[SammyWinstonJack]

34. I can't imagine him reading it out loud.

[sufrommich]

39. +1. nt

[TBF]

46. Forget Dubya - I can't imagine students today writing that period.

They are too busy learning how to take bogus tests to prepare themselves for their burger flipping "service careers".

[antigone382]

3. Imagine Bush writing something like this...

lol

I don't have a problem with saying you respect certain types of conservatism. It doesn't mean you agree, it just means you acknowledge that certain types of conservatism can come from a nuanced and principled worldview...

[frazzled]

5. Wow, remember when people used to write letters like this ...

to their romantic partners, full of deep thoughts and philosophical musings? (Well, most of us wouldn't have written as well as this; but it's true that we used to discuss literature, philosophy, art, and theater with people, even our lovers.) Now people text: what r u doing?

I can't imagine GW Bush (or Willard Romney, for that matter) writing such a literate letter to a 'romantic partner.'

[Scuba]

8. +1

[cbdo2007]

29. No thinking required anymore.....

It's MORE communication with LESS content.

[CTyankee]

36. It's kinda sweet but I can imagine that he's a bit embarrassed by it now...

I still have some of my papers from grad school and I used to write lots of "high concept" essays...some of them I have re-read and couldn't understand...

[frazzled]

41. Yeah, once in a while ...

I come across a book from college in which I had madly underlined things and written notes in the margin (imagine that!). I have no idea why I was so worked up over Heidegger or Wittgenstein. I can't fathom it at all now. As for graduate school ... what was I even THINKING?? Thinking--deep thinking--is a necessary activity for the young, even if it does come back to embarrass or confuse you a bit later in life. I'm pretty sure there are some young people who still do it; though the means for transmitting such thoughts to others are getting more scarce, and the repercussions (accusations of effeteness or nerdiness) more immediate. It used to be cool to discuss "deep" topics (of course, maybe it was the drugs).

I have been complaining for the last decade about people not having conversations anymore. When we'd have people over for dinner, the topic would always be what they were doing in their work or some award they'd won or a project on the burner ... as if I cared ... rather than some random, fascinating topic of discussion. It all seemed so egotistical and self-important: I stopped having dinner parties, except for close friends; and even then sometimes I'd have to announce "okay, no more shop talk."

I don't think Obama should be embarrassed: he was participating in the passionate exploration of ideas that are the province of the young. He should be proud he had such a phase.

[CTyankee]

45. Oh, of course he should't be embarrassed. I didn't mean that at all. But we all write stuff

at an earlier year in our lives that can seem to be a bit estoteric later on. OK , fine.

I'm just saying that these media outlets want to make it seem stupid and vacuous for their onw ends.

It won't work. Not this time. No more of using your best attribute against you. We've caught onto that game. It's over.

This subject is just a sideline...

[Laura PourMeADrink]

50. So, tell me, what do you think some good topics of conversation could be? Aside from politics

Aside from sports.

[frazzled]

52. Something totally unexpected ...

really, anything except advertising what you're doing in your work ... because work is not the whole of life, and this is a dinner party, after all

How about:

(1) A discussion of a movie you saw or a book you read about.

(2) Is the digital world we live in causing us to think in different ways?

(3) Is football becoming too dangerous to its players?

(4) How could cities become more amenable to walkers?

(5) Gin or vodka? (pros and cons)

(6) At what age is a person wisest?

You know, things that fly into the room around the second glass of wine.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

54. good ones. I especially like the topic about who the digital world

has changed us. It has caused us to feel the pressure to respond immediately. To voice mails, to faxes, texts,
to emails. In the past, you had the automatic breathing room time of waiting for the US mail (or interoffice envelope) to deliver a request for action. If you didn't want to answer the phone, you just didn't, and you never would even know what people
wanted. Less stress, for sure.

I have a personal theory also, that instant business news is a major root of many of our problems. Long ago, say you
owned IBM, you might pick up a newspaper once in a while and see it went up $.50/share, and you were happy. Now, you
see fluctuations by the second. You also see every move IBM makes and every financial report. This has caused companies to worry
about constantly improving earnings. The only way they can do that is to cut staff and cut benefits and cut salary increases and ship jobs overseas. That, to me, is why the middle class has been screwed and real income growth stagnant. Solution: ban CNBC. haha.

[magical thyme]

7. uh-oh. GOP takeaway, aside from the above, is proof he's gay.

his romantic partner is Alex.

[bluestate10]

51. Alex is used for females as much or more than for males. nt.

[magical thyme]

59. tell it to the GOP

ps...it was a joke!

[TrogL]

10. Wow!!!!

The Waste Land is my second favourite poem (The Hollow Men is my favourite).

The footnotes are indeed important otherwise line 425 doesn't many any sense, which Obama seems to have missed (unless that's what he means by "ambivalence". America itself sits at the moment at a similar cusp.

[myrna minx]

11. Can you imagine Dubya writing such a wonderful, introspective letter?

[FloridaJudy]

14. What?

You mean he didn't text "Waht's up with u 2nite?" the way most college students do now?

My head explodes when I try to imagine any of the Republican candidates writing something like this! I had to Google "Münzer" and "prosopography" to make sense of this, BTW. Most Republicans I know wouldn't bother, since it's not covered in the Bible.

[MADem]

43. The truly twitter-literati would use the "Wassup" form!

So, twenty or thirty years from now, will we be reading the college tweets of the presidential candidates, I wonder?

[Enrique]

15. remind me never to become president

I don't have any clue what I wrote in personal letters when I was 22, but I'm certain I don't want it published in Vanity Fair.

[uponit7771]

21. +1

[Odin2005]

16. Wow, that's deep!

[yellowcanine]

20. Obama discussed T.S. Eliot with a woman friend? What a snob!

[MADem]

33. It gets better--she was a FURRINER!! Aussie, Aussie, Aussie!!! nt

[BumRushDaShow]

25. He is Spock.

[msanthrope]

28. That's hot. nt

[TBF]

47. +1 nt

[Laura PourMeADrink]

35. update...more about the Obama biography

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2012/05/david-maraniss-barack-obama-genevieve-cook

[Prism]

37. "I never did bother to check all the footnotes"

This makes me admire him more.

[Old and In the Way]

38. I have to admit, most of this goes over my head.

Read it a few times and I really can't say that I grok his thoughts here. But I do understand that this excerpt shows he has deep intellectual capacity and I'm thankful we have someone who is capable of critical thinking, leading this nation.

[alcibiades_mystery]

53. It's actually a fairly conventional take on Eliot

He certainly knows the material, but there's nothing here that people haven't said before.

[Laura PourMeADrink]

55. sure do hope no one researches this and finds he lifted it all from Cliffs Notes. nt

[alcibiades_mystery]

58. Seriously?

[Laura PourMeADrink]

60. of course not. I am just so impressed with what he wrote. nt

[cali]

62. that's true but he says it rather well.

It's evident that he's thinking about it, not merely parroting.

[alcibiades_mystery]

63. No argument there

It's a conventional take on Eliot but well and thoughtfully stated.

[deutsey]

42. Does my English major heart good to read this

[GeorgeGist]

44. How romantic

[JI7]

49. he continually proves me right about him

[cali]

61. in what way?

[JI7]

64. i liked him because i considered him a deep thinker

[LibertyLover]

57. What's really going to piss off the right-wing nuts

is that one of the women Mr. Maraniss interviewed for his book knew President Obama at Occidental College. They reconnected in New York and began dating. I remember that one of the things the birther types kept complaining about was that nobody was coming forward from Occidental or Columbia claiming to have known Obama while he was there, so he must have lied about his time at those schools. Oooops, there goes that theory.