One thing to note about Obama's literary tastes are how WASP, even Congregationalist they are. According to Michiko Kakutani, his Facebook page during the last election said his favorite books were: "Shakespeare’s plays, Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick” and Marilynne Robinson‘s “Gilead” are mentioned on his Facebook page, along with the Bible, Lincoln’s collected writings and Emerson’s “Self Reliance“"
Obama's is about the WASPiest list imaginable.''
Whoever put this list up on Facebook probably was assigned to invent a list of books. First of all, it is evident, from various public statements he has made, that O is not conversant with the Bible. Secondly, most educated people (at least in earlier times) read these books in high school or college. How many people sit around and read Emerson for entertainment nowadays? Or Lincoln's Collected Writings? The list is risible.
Notice that the novel, Robinson's Gilead is one of those novels with a racial theme. How very politically correct to include that one.
I simply don't believe the list, just as I never believed the silly fawning stories of what Bill Clinton supposedly read in his free time. Occasionally Clinton would be photographed carrying some ponderous volume of history or something, as he left to go on vacation. Who believes he was the serious scholar or bookworm? It was all for show.
The media, slobbering lap-dogs that they are, create this image of their favorite politicians as being intellectual, highbrow, cultured. The hype about the last two Democrat presidents especially struck me as less than believable. I never saw one glimmer of evidence that Clinton was erudite and a near-genius, as he was depicted by his disciples. I see no evidence of any such gifts on the part of the current occupant either.
As for the list being 'WASPy', by what definition? There are different kinds of WASPs, but I suppose when most Americans use the word, they have in mind the stereotype of the upper-class, old money, Boston-accented snobs. I'd say such people are few and far between now, and as I've written, there are precious few people who even identify as WASPs anymore, even though they may be of predominantly English ancestry. The Northeast, supposedly the stomping ground of these fabled old-money WASPs is dominated by a very multicultural 'elite' now, many of them ethnic and/or 'new money.'
And the notion that the current occupant of the WH is 'partly WASP' by ancestry is by no means established. In any case, if we are to believe the official story, he grew up in very non-WASPy places like Hawaii and Indonesia, and went to college, supposedly, in California and New York City. About as non-WASP as you can get, in my opinion, even if the ancestry is there.
Still, the WASP gets invoked often on the Internet, usually as a whipping-boy or as a bad example of some sort, even though they seem to be elusive in real life. I suppose they, or at least the stereotype of them, serve a useful purpose. If they didn't exist, they'd have to be invented, as Sartre supposedly said of the Jew.
