What Are You Wearing...er...Reading?

Here's what passes for journalism at the National Review: What's Obama Reading; On this summer’s presidential book list, fiction trumps reality.

Seriously, besides for fiction quite often being an intellectually creative way to discuss and explore human nature, sometimes it's damn good. Is Tevi Troy, the article's author, seriously suggesting that all a President should read are books that make him (Tevi, not the Preznit) feel good?

No, Tevi is just taking a cheap political shot, and a massively stupid one at that:

First, five of the six are novels, and the near-absence of nonfiction sends the wrong message for any president, because it sets him up for the charge that he is out of touch with reality.

Really?? I read fiction, therefore am out of touch with reality? That doesn't even make sense. I drink chocolate milk, therefore I haven't grown up. Oh, but there's more epic grasping-at-straws:

Beyond the issue of fiction vs. nonfiction, there is also the question of genre. The Bayou Trilogy has received excellent reviews, but it is a mystery series...Room is another well-received novel, but it is about a mother and child trapped in an 11-by-11-foot room. This claustrophobic adventure does not strike me as the right choice for someone trying to escape the perception that he is trapped in a White House bubble.

Yeah. You read it. Reading mysteries makes it impossible for the President to escape a perception that he lives in a bubble. Shoot me.

He goes on to winge about a book about an Israeli woman maybe harming how he is vioewed in the Palestine-Israeli conflict and the absence of "conservative" fiction (which to me, is their entire platform). He ends with this gem:

Either way, the annual book list should be a relatively easy way to make the president appear to be on top of things and in control. This year’s list, alas, reveals a president who appears to be neither.

.Tevi is listed as a "senior fellow at the Hudson Institute." This Institute is a think tank wherein the first quote about its founder - Herman Kahn - is from Donald Fucking Rumsfeld. So...there's that. Tevi ought to be ashamed of having wasted the 35 seconds it took to write this diatribe. Unfortunately, it appears it was taken seriously enough for the National Review to put it up.

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