Image from malacandra at Daily Kos.

“I think you might be confusing tyranny with losing. And I feel for you, because I’ve been there. A few times. In fact, one of them was a bit of a nail-biter. But see, when the guy that you disagree with gets elected, he’s probably going to do things you disagree with. He could cut taxes on the wealthy, remove government’s oversight capability, invade a country that you thought should not be invaded, but that’s not tyranny. That’s democracy. See, now you’re in the minority. It’s supposed to taste like a shit taco.”

from John Stewart.

First he supposedly bowed to the Saudi king. Now, you tell me, but it sure looks like he bowed to Mexican President Calderon’s golden retriever. I’m probably a bad one to ask what the ultimate meaning of this is and if it means America is weak, as I bow to my golden retriever too.

From President Obama’s speech to the CIA earlier today. “We are on the better side of history.”

From Joe Klein:

As it stands, our socialist, pacifist, crypto-Muslim President has bagged three terrorist in the most dramatic fashion and saved a Captain.

For a background, read this Daily Kos diary on how the GOP lost by betting against the US and President Obama.

Zadie Smith, a wonderful writer whose work I adore, tries to define the transcendent character of Barack Obama. It’s long but well worth reading for both her words and her message. Here’s a short excerpt.

It gives me a strange sensation to turn from Shaw’s melancholy Pygmalion story to another, infinitely more hopeful version, written by the new president of the United States of America. Of course, his ear isn’t half bad either. In Dreams from My Father, the new president displays an enviable facility for dialogue, and puts it to good use, animating a cast every bit as various as the one James Baldwin—an obvious influence—conjured for his own many-voiced novel Another Country. Obama can do young Jewish male, black old lady from the South Side, white woman from Kansas, Kenyan elders, white Harvard nerds, black Columbia nerds, activist women, churchmen, security guards, bank tellers, and even a British man called Mr. Wilkerson, who on a starry night on safari says credibly British things like: “I believe that’s the Milky Way.” This new president doesn’t just speak for his people. He can speak them. It is a disorienting talent in a president; we’re so unused to it. I have to pinch myself to remember who wrote the following well-observed scene, seemingly plucked from a comic novel:

“Man, I’m not going to any more of these bullshit Punahou parties.”

“Yeah, that’s what you said the last time….”

“I mean it this time…. These girls are A-1, USDA-certified racists. All of ‘em. White girls. Asian girls—shoot, these Asians worse than the whites. Think we got a disease or something.”

“Maybe they’re looking at that big butt of yours. Man, I thought you were in training.”

“Get your hands out of my fries. You ain’t my bitch, nigger…buy your own damn fries. Now what was I talking about?”

“Just ’cause a girl don’t go out with you doesn’t make her a racist.”

This is the voice of Obama at seventeen, as remembered by Obama. He’s still recognizably Obama; he already seeks to unpack and complicate apparently obvious things (“Just ’cause a girl don’t go out with you doesn’t make her a racist”); he’s already gently cynical about the impassioned dogma of other people (“Yeah, that’s what you said the last time”). And he has a sense of humor (“Maybe they’re looking at that big butt of yours”). Only the voice is different: he has made almost as large a leap as Eliza Doolittle. The conclusions Obama draws from his own Pygmalion experience, however, are subtler than Shaw’s. The tale he tells is not the old tragedy of gaining a new, false voice at the expense of a true one. The tale he tells is all about addition. His is the story of a genuinely many-voiced man. If it has a moral it is that each man must be true to his selves, plural.

• Dick Cavett on the time (October 14, 1981) when, two of my favorite writers, John Updike and John Cheever paid him a visit on his talk show.
• A former religious right leader, Frank Schaeffer, writes an open letter to President Obama.
• Strange bedfellows, the religious right and the Christian left, join forces to provide advice to Obama on reducing poverty.  This is a good thing.
• What Hookers Do on Valentine’s Day.
• And, a bit of reading for the occasion, Money Can’t Buy You Love.

• Paul Begala on the GOP strategy of Denial, Delay and Do Nothing.
• “What Rocky Start” by Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post.
• Even Senators have tax problems.  But who’s surprised?
• Former Whitney and SF MOMA Museum Director, David Ross, has some contemporary art recommendations for the Obama’s private White House quarters.  Interesting ones that I must say would make me exceedingly happy, especially my friend Laura Owens. I love it that the Obamas are considering having art by living American artists in the residence.  Another change I can believe in.
• And, then there is this January 2006 LA Times article which, thanks to the Internet, I just read this morning. Did you spot the reference to the old fart in a past life?

• I watched Obama’s prepared statement at his press conference and then listened to the Q&A as I was driving to LAX.  Forgetting the actual answers, I was amazed at what I was hearing as far as the language, complete sentences and fully thought out answers. Mark Nickolas has run Obama’s answer through Word’s readability scoring and compared them to Bush’s with a not very surprising result if you you’ve been paying attention.
• Anne Appelbaum on our only ticket out of Afghanistan, the Afghan army.
• Noam Scheiber on Obama’s mastery of the old “rope-a-dope.”
• When you hear the word “Christian,” what comes to mind? Is it love, compassion, service, humility and grace? Or is it more along the lines of anger, self-righteousness, judgmentalism and hypocrisy? Cathlene Falsani on, one of my pet issues, the need to re-brand Christianity and the documentary, “Lord, Save Us From Your Followers.”