Barack Obama

By F. Opper in Puck, 1881.

Yes, Mr. Kristof, This Is America

Why are we so surprised by our own bigotry?

Killing the Buddha

Tea Party: a Nation of Islam for White People?

Jenean McBrearty offers a response to JoAnn Wypijewski’s “Outside a Tea Party“: While in graduate school in the 1980s, I was often alone in empty halls after undergrads had left.…

Killing the Buddha

Obama’s Nobel: A Jewish Conspiracy to Combat Space Nazis

At last, someone presents a justification for Obama’s Nobel Prize I can get behind: Fighting Nazis on the moon.

Killing the Buddha

Ghosts of Cairo

Anthea Butler hears the ghost of Malcolm X in Obama’s Cairo speech. “So the past isn’t over until we understand it,” writes poet Lawrence Raab in his new book, The…

Cornel West

The Supreme Love and Revolutionary Funk of Dr. Cornel West, Philosopher of the Blues

(A version of this article first appeared in the May 28, 2009 Rolling Stone.) Cornel West is a slender man, but he hugs like a sumo wrestler: crouch, grab, wrap…

Killing the Buddha

Unusual Suspects

Dan Gilgoff explains why the Sotomayor nomination hearings may not be so predictable after all on his U.S. News and World Report blog, God and Country. In The Guide, the…

photo by David Katz/Obama for America

A Niche of a Prayer in a Vulnerable Place

A voyeur, a thief, and Barack Obama at the Wailing Wall.