David Axelrod described the message coming from President Barack Obama days before Election Day as "coming from his loins."
"I've never seen him more exhilarated than he is right now. He
believes in what he's doing. He believes in what he's fighting for,"
Axelrod told reporters Friday after the president's event in Lima, Ohio.
"You can see in the speech that he's delivering that this is coming
from his loins."
"I just wanted to say loins," the president's senior adviser added with a
smirk. "I wanted to see if I can get loins in the story."
Axelrod forever.
04 May 2012
"When Obama first moved to New York in 1981 as a junior at Columbia, he lived in an apartment on West 109th Street. Since the heat didn’t work, the apartment was freezing and Obama and his roommate were sleeping in sleeping bags to stay warm. To stay warm, they eventually resorted to camping out at Columbia’s Butler Library, which was open all night." --Ben Jacobs in the Huffington Post excerpting from the forthcoming David Maraniss biography of the President. But good luck getting cheap breakfast at Tom's any more. Also, he read INVISIBLE MAN a lot. And did the crossword over coffee Sundays, as you do.
I had earlier read on Twitter that the bookstore the President went to was refusing to release his choices. Like he has anything of which to be ashamed! Maybe he was picking up the HUNGER GAMES trilogy for the kids and felt embarrassed? Maybe he's supposed to not read anything besides his briefings (in which case, not so much a vacation as "work in a different place")? I haven't read any of these but I find the list solid. How about you?
So hey I stopped blogging about this book because I got busy and I didn't have time to finish it -- also it was slow and not very suspenseful -- but I finally finished. Now I know why this didn't become the 2011 PRIMARY COLORS, but in order to tell you why I'm going to spoil the end of this book.
If you don't want to know how O: A PRESIDENTIAL NOVEL ends, stop reading right now.
I mean it.
Well okay then! O: A PRESIDENTIAL NOVEL takes place over the 2012 election cycle in which Official Presidential Standin is running for reelection against Tom Morrison, a McCain-Romney hybrid (decorated war hero, former governor of a moderate Democratic-leaning state). Morrison is basically untouchable. Also, the economy and the war in Afghanistan are major issues -- not surprising. There is a passing mention of Sarah Palin, but nothing much. The main villain, at least as described here, is an Arianna Huffingtonesque new-media magnate named Bianca Stefani who pays bloggers almost nothing to report on scurrilous rumors.
The central plot twist in this book concerns one such scurrilous rumor of a cover-up on the side of the Morrison campaign that Stefani and the reporter/blogger assigned to the Morrison campaign amplify, to the potential detriment of the O. campaign. The O. campaign is approached with this rumor by a major donor a few days before Stefani publishes it, but decides not to do anything; unfortunately, because Stefani's site leans left, everyone blames the O. campaign for letting it get out. Then the campaign finds out that major donor had his own agenda for leaking that rumor and have to keep that quiet, as well. From there on it's all, idealists lose their steam, campaign staff sleep together sometimes, et cetera.
Here is why ultimately this book is not still making news: It doesn't have an ending! It literally ends on the day before the general election. After acting so shocked over all the corruption and bad behavior in politics, the anonymous author could at least have had the courage of his convictions to pick a winner. Why did I waste my time otherwise?! Oh, I am steamed. Well, hopefully I saved you the indignant anger.
27 January 2011
TIME's The Page blog is the latest to call Mark Salter the author of O: A PRESIDENTIAL NOVEL. Note however that Salter has not commented nor has it been confirmed, so this is basically a list of coincidences.
I'm about a fourth of the way through this book and it is not magically full of insights on anything. The character of Maddy Cohan is kind of insulting, but not in a creative way. I'll probably still finish it because of an interesting plot development, which I both hope and fear will turn into something.
Some people I follow on Twitter declared today Positive Day and it's something I think would be useful to observe across all my Internets. Hence:
Is this weather not perfect for book-hibernation? (Caution: may not apply to Southern Hemisphere, equatorial regions, lizards.)
I left some books in my lobby over the weekend, and someone wrote a thank-you note on the communal whiteboard. Not shabby! (Photo evidence forthcoming.)
I got some quality time in reading yesterday while I was taking the subway everywhere.
Even though most of my books are in boxes right now, it's only a temporary separation.
Less than 3 months till THE PALE KING comes out. And O: A PRESIDENTIAL NOVEL (feel compelled to write the whole title) is out tomorrow.
Jon Avlon of The Daily Beast claims the subgenre of anti-Presidential angry screed has flourished like never before in the first half of President Obama's first term. I have my doubts as to his methods but then there's this:
There are plenty of rational reasons to oppose the policies of President Obama and his administration. Accusing him of being a Manchurian candidate out to undermine the Constitution and replace it with Communism isn't one of them.
New York Times: According to a new book, once(-and-future?) governor of New York Eliot Spitzer so impressed a prostitute he hired that she read a biography of him.
CNet: While I'm not remotely interested in getting an iPad, these animated children's books (including ALICE IN WONDERLAND and some Dr. Seuss) are beautiful.
Chicago Sun-Times: The author of a tell-all book on Oprah is surprised that some people won't take her phone calls now. Also, the Sun-Times has an entire blog dedicated to Oprah news... I now feel 23 percent better about my life choices.
Washington Post: Every six months demands a good what-Obama-is-reading piece, this one studded with bits of trivia on other 20th-century presidents.
Associated Press: She's so excited, she's so excited, she's so... Elizabeth Berkley is writing a YA advice book.
So my feed reader where I pick up all my bloggin' goodness has been acting up, making it temporarily appear now and then as if there were no new entries to read anywhere. How could all my blogmigos go on blogcation without me? When it is working, like now, I'm overwhelmed with stuff I missed, plus I'm totally pre-posting this because today I have to go to Washington Heights to get my ass kicked, (and then go home and reconsider my life choices?), so here are some items of note that may be slightly out of date:
First and foremost, we have a landing date:
That's the Tuesday before Labor Day, so you know not to go anywhere this year. Perhaps by then J-Franz will have a working website for hopeful readers to visit, but that is a completely different topic of discussion.
Yann Martel was pretty stoked to get a fan letter from President Obama. But who wouldn't be? (via Galleycat)
This street art exhibit is one of the coolest things I have ever seen. The artists, originally from Madrid, spread out 800 books on a street in Brooklyn (that's the Brooklyn Bridge at the end of the street in the first photo) over two hours one night and called it "Literature finally won the traffic battle in New York."
CBS has ordered a comedy pilot for this fall about a "book editor at a boutique New York publishing house" called "Open Books." I don't expect much coming from a producer of "Will and Grace," but I am slightly curious now that they've cast Patti LuPone and Laura Benanti in it.
Billy Crudup will take on the role of a controversial writer Off-Broadway this spring in a new play by one of my favorite playwrights, Adam Rapp. The play, "The Metal Children," is about a YA author who goes to the small town where one of his books has been banned -- something Rapp went through in Pennsylvania a few years ago with his YA novel THE BUFFALO TREE. I was on board this hype train before Crudup got involved but it's always good to see him when he's not all blue and glowy. You can also see him this summer as Elizabeth Gilbert's ex-husband in "Eat, Pray, Love."
Finally, via Flavorwire, the trailer for Seth Grahame-Smith's ABRAHAM LINCOLN, VAMPIRE HUNTER (not for kids):
Frankly I've seen better Lincolns in the national park system. If only I could remember where.
"In all, the books on his list total around 2,300 pages — meaning the president would have to read close to 300 pages each day of his week-long vacation to polish off the list." Now that's how you relax! Full list, from CNN:
George Pelecanos, THE WAY HOME
Thomas Friedman, HOT, FLAT, AND CROWDED
Richard Price, LUSH LIFE
Kent Haruf, PLAINSONG
David McCullough, JOHN ADAMS
Let's all picture ourselves with a stack of books on Martha's Vineyard instead of participating in the New York subway's involuntary Bikram. Thanks to DRA for sending me this.
The world discovered late last night or early this morning that presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama picked Delaware senator Joe Biden as his vice-presidential candidate. I knew next to nothing about Biden before today, but for the record, Camus totally called this one last week.
So what does Joe Biden like to read? A cached version of his Facebook page gives us two of his favorite books last year: AMERICAN GOSPEL: GOD, THE FOUNDING FATHERS AND THE MAKING OF A NATION by Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, and IRISH AMERICA: COMING INTO CLOVER by Maureen Dezell. If you would guess by these that Biden is religious and of Irish descent, you are correct. A site on the Iowa caucus adds John Grisham's THE RUNAWAY JURY to this list, which I remember as being slightly better than THE PELICAN BRIEF and THE RAINMAKER but not as memorable as THE FIRM.
Of course Biden has also written a book, and last year's PROMISES TO KEEP: ON LIFE AND POLITICS is probably disappearing from your local secondhand bookstore right this second. And according to the Huffington Post, he likes to quote Yeats' "Easter 1916" on the Senate floor (from which the title of this post was taken).
An eagle-eyed New York Times photographer caught Senator Obama in Bozeman, Montana carrying a copy (with placeholder) of Fareed Zakaria's THE POST-AMERICAN WORLD. Good choice, sir! I have a copy of it to review although I haven't had the chance to read it yet; it looks like a very interesting tome.
I'm too tired at the moment to find similar photos of Senators Clinton and McCain, so consider yourself challenged to find them. I'm sure all politicians on the road have a lot of down time in transit and, if disciplined, can get a fair amount of reading done if they're not preoccupied with, you know, running for high office. Reading calms me down, so I would make sure my campaign bus had a lot of books on it. But you already knew that about me.
