Word to the Wise

Every so often Steve Sailer pops up in comments here to claim that neither I nor anyone else in the press has read Barack Obama's first book Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance because obviously if more people read it, more people would share the Sailer interpretation of Obama (I'd say Mike Tomasky's much closer to the mark). Well, I read it some time ago. Was encouraged to do so, in fact, by someone on staff with his campaign.

Like most writers who've read it, the main thing that comes across is that Obama's a good writer -- a politician capable of producing a pretty good book without an army of ghostwriters at his disposal. It's a pretty impressive achievement and also probably helps give him some of his heir of authenticity. One knows that he know more writes his own lines at this point than does any other major presidential candidate, but he seems like someone who could.

Comments

s/b "no more"

Posted by El Cid | February 24, 2008 12:24 PM

An "air" of authenticity would be good to have also.

Posted by lobstakilla | February 24, 2008 12:24 PM

His "heir of authenticity"? He "know more writes his own lines than any other candidate"? Yglesias, you crack me up. Get yourself an army of copy editors.

Posted by kyle | February 24, 2008 12:25 PM

Good grief, Matt. "[H]eir of authenticity"? "[K]now more writes"?

Posted by THS | February 24, 2008 12:25 PM

Yeah, it's good, but it ain't no "Four Trials."

Posted by collin | February 24, 2008 12:27 PM

Seriously, get some fucking quality control for the small stuff. Mornings like this you look like a goon.

Posted by kyle | February 24, 2008 12:29 PM

We like the spelling-afflicted Matt. It's part of the package around here.

Posted by otto | February 24, 2008 12:33 PM

Grammar cops: Matt sometimes conflates homonyms when he blogs. Longtime readers no this and forgive him four it.

Posted by zippy | February 24, 2008 12:36 PM

Matt Yglesias: Putting his career on the line to demonstrate the limitations of voice recognition software.

Posted by Led | February 24, 2008 12:37 PM

I don't mind the typos. My theory has always been that Matt uses a speech-to-text program and dictates his posts; it would make a lot of sense.

Posted by Freddie | February 24, 2008 12:37 PM

Matt, can't you hire some third-grader to check your spelling and grammar? I'm sure we would see a significant improvement at a mere 50 cents per post.

Posted by fostert | February 24, 2008 12:38 PM

actually, Obama does write a lot more of his speech material than other candidates. he writes most of his material.

Posted by onceler | February 24, 2008 12:40 PM

Matt,

Steve Sailer agrees that Obama is an excellent writer. And then he comments on the content of Obama's book. Why don't you?

Posted by Fred | February 24, 2008 12:42 PM

It really is weird that pundits, even the Yglesias's, have a lazy way with candidates' actual writing. They know that Bush didn't even READ his "autobiography" and that Hillary's books are ghosted, so they assume Obama's must have no useful REAL information. Actually Obama wrote EVERY WORD of both Dreams and The Audacity of Hope. The latter, written after a year in the senate, is specifically about the collision of his ideals and the realities of modern politics. When I read people who claim not to know what Obama stands for--and there's a book out there that has been atop the bestseller list and that has sold well over a million copies--I wonder what these guys (including Yglesias) are doing. I hope when he was at Harvard he read the books in his History & Lit and Soc Stud courses and didn't opine on their subjects--his writing about Obama certainly doesn't reflect that.

Posted by David NotBrooks | February 24, 2008 12:49 PM

It really is weird that pundits, even the Yglesiases, have a lazy way with candidates' actual writing. They know that Bush didn't even READ his "autobiography" and that Hillary's books are ghosted, so they assume Obama's must have no useful REAL information. Actually Obama wrote EVERY WORD of both Dreams and The Audacity of Hope. The latter, written after a year in the senate, is specifically about the collision of his ideals and the realities of modern politics. When I read people who claim not to know what Obama stands for--and there's a book out there that has been atop the bestseller list and that has sold well over a million copies--I wonder what these guys (including Yglesias) are doing. I hope when he was at Harvard he read the books in his History & Lit and Soc Stud courses and didn't just opine on their subjects--his writing about Obama certainly doesn't reflect that.

Posted by David NotBrooks | February 24, 2008 12:50 PM

It really is weird that pundits, even the Yglesiases, have a lazy way with candidates' actual writing. They know that Bush didn't even READ his "autobiography" and that Hillary's books are ghosted, so they assume Obama's must have no useful REAL information. Actually Obama wrote EVERY WORD of both Dreams and The Audacity of Hope. The latter, written after a year in the senate, is specifically about the collision of his ideals and the realities of modern politics. When I read people who claim not to know what Obama stands for--and there's a book out there that has been atop the bestseller list and that has sold well over a million copies--I wonder what these guys (including Yglesias) are doing. I hope when he was at Harvard he read the books in his History & Lit and Soc Stud courses and didn't just opine on their subjects--his writing about Obama certainly doesn't reflect that.

Posted by David NotBrooks | February 24, 2008 12:50 PM

Mistakes, fine. But for a soi-disant 'writer'? In the same post where the claim is made?

Posted by burning flock | February 24, 2008 12:57 PM

The typos have long since become part of the Yglesias brand. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Matt was largely doing it intentionally at this point, as a kind of running in-joke.

Posted by live | February 24, 2008 1:00 PM

There's a commenter over at the Salon boards who claims she's been reading the book and putting anything she suspects might be plagarized into Google. Some people are just way too eager to read the worst into everything.

Posted by Persia | February 24, 2008 1:01 PM

'intersubjective' and 'heir' of ... in the same post.

Wow!

Matt is the most literate (or pompous?) mis-speller ever.

Posted by gregor | February 24, 2008 1:01 PM

I'm sure you meant to say 'homophone' when pointing out Matt's grammar mistakes just now, zippy.

Posted by omellet | February 24, 2008 1:10 PM

Egads, bad spelling.

Just from a personal perspective, I was at an Obama rally with a friend. He's a big fan, though I am not particularly enamored with him. I had a clear shot at the computer running the teleprompter, which had the text of the speech scrolling down the screen. It was interesting to see how other political speakers stuck to the teleprompter. Obama on the other hand went off on his own quite often, and for extended periods of time, only to return to the teleprompter later.

Posted by Bribes | February 24, 2008 1:10 PM

I don't know who Steve Sailor is, but the website says he is The American Conservative's film critic. I don't really have anything to say about that, just that I like imagining conservative film criticism. I bet it's......critical.

Posted by Jen | February 24, 2008 1:20 PM

I've read Obama's book... I thought it was great. Powerful and moving. I've loaned it to a bunch of my friends and they've all felt the same way. (One even switched from Hillary to Obama after reading Living History side by side with Dreams from my Father.)

Steve Sailer thinks the book shows a man who is obsessed with race; that is because Steve is obsessed with race. Steve also has written that we should be concerned that Obama suffers from serious depression because Obama has chosen to be honest in his book about some rough times in his life.

Posted by Algernon | February 24, 2008 1:31 PM

Zippy and other MY-defenders:

Homophones are one thing. What about the very sentence in which he styles himself a "writer":

Like most writers who've read it, the main thing that comes across is that Obama's a good writer

the dangling modifier is so crashingly bad that I really hope it was a joke - but somehow suspect it wasn't

Posted by dgj | February 24, 2008 1:32 PM

I don't know who Steve Sailor is

Good for you and keep it that way - he's getting way too much attention as it is.

This is due partially due to Matt's irresistible urge to engage him. So, Matt, I really don't mind the spelling errors, but please quit lavishing your attention on idiots like Sailer and Goldberg.

Posted by novakant | February 24, 2008 1:35 PM

Matt, I'm not usually a tough critic of typos, and I usually enjoy your work, but this post is embarrassingly bad.

The wording is so garbled that it's not entirely clear what you were trying to say, and I have even less of an idea why you would bother responding to Sailer's trolling unless you intended to refute the substance of his claim, which is more or less that the book proves Obama to be a double-secret acolyte of Al Sharpton.

I'm interested to hear what you have to say about the book. Please try again.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | February 24, 2008 1:43 PM

MY, you might want to fix your blogroll.

As long as we're talking about how you do your job.

Posted by Kiril | February 24, 2008 1:44 PM

Actually, Jen, Peter Suderman is a pretty great film critic. It's not his job as such, but he does it some and is very good.

Posted by jhupp | February 24, 2008 1:49 PM

he know [sic] more writes his own lines at this point than does any other major presidential candidate

Actually, he writes more than most. There was an interview with Jon Favreau which showed the process he uses, and you'd expect it from someone who's got a well-established writing and speaking style.

(And Fred? If you love Sailer Boy so much, why don't you marry him?)

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | February 24, 2008 1:56 PM

The previous post was made at 11:59. This one at 12:13.

Part of the deal is that matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com is home to a high volume of Matthew Yglesias' thoughts. Another part of the deal is that the tradeoff between volume and grammatical quality is skewed way, way, way, way toward volume, (also perhaps with the assumption that at least one commenter will be able to figure out what Matt was talking about and explain it to the rest down here)

Posted by Arnold Evans | February 24, 2008 2:00 PM

kyle: he has an army of copy editors: you guys. Now if he'd listen to you and fix his typos, we could all be happy. :)

pseudonymous: Good link to the Favreau interview, thanks.

Posted by keith | February 24, 2008 2:00 PM

Personally, what I find most annoying about MY's writing is that 99% of the time he refuses to correct the errors once they are pointed out. Sullivan and Greenwald occasionally make typos/grammar mistakes, but they correct them almost immediately. Matt leaves them there even after 40 people have pointed them out, as if to say, "Bite me." Well, Matt, you're the "writer." Shouldn't you be judged on your, um, writing?

Also, it is painfully obvious that you don't even bother to glance over the posts you write after you write them, much less proofread them. If you are trying to appear sloppy and intellectually lazy, Mission Accomplished!

Posted by jim | February 24, 2008 2:02 PM

Dreams for My Father is a finely observed, gracefully written book by any standard. If you want to know where Obama comes from, and how his mind works, this is the first place to go. Some have commented on its frankness, but what I find most characteristic is the book's emotional restraint, a distancing that makes its saddest moments that much more moving.

The book is also quite funny, in a wryly self-deprecating way. Out of curiosity, I recently got out of the library the abridged audiobook version that he reads aloud himself, and it turns out to be genuinely entertaining. Obama has a good ear for voice and intonation (he must be a wickedly funny mimic in private), and to hear him doing the accents of the different family members he meets in Kenya, and those of the South Siders he meets when he first comes to Chicago ("What's your name, Obamba? Look here, Obamba..."), is a real hoot.

Posted by Patrick | February 24, 2008 2:02 PM

dgj sez:

the dangling modifier is so crashingly bad that I really hope it was a joke - but somehow suspect it wasn't

Crikey. This is just the kind of George Will-esque grammatical pretension that makes me think Eubonics should be mandatory in public schools.

This blog is about politics. Worship the light, not the lamp.

Posted by zippy | February 24, 2008 2:05 PM

Anyone care to copy the text from the main posting, paste it into a comment form, edit it to his or her heart's content and leave a typo-and-grammar-mistake-free version of the post in the comments? That might be appreciated by someone.

Posted by Arnold Evans | February 24, 2008 2:05 PM

wow, the knives come out. chin up Matt. we're all reading your blog. its all constructive criticism.

Posted by speechwriter | February 24, 2008 2:07 PM

I agree with the observations about Obama's abilities at writing; people who write and speak well are at least fairly competent in a general sense.

This says nothing about character or personality; that has to be evaluated with a different yardstick -- my boss speaks like JFK, and writes like Steinbeck, but he's still an asshole.

Now tell me you made all the mistakes in those paragraphs on purpose. Please.

Posted by Jemand von Niemand | February 24, 2008 2:08 PM

Which is why Hillary's criticism of Obama being like Bush is sooooooo laughable. Could Bush write a book like that? Could Bush, seriously, make it through reading a book like that?

Also, on NAFTA...Hillary is trying to have it both ways on her husband's administration. NAFTA devastated my great state of Ohio, especially my region in Northwest Ohio. She doesn't get to come here and talk up trade agreements and the economy. She has lots of explaining to do to the broken homes and families that were rolled over by the businesses going south because of her husband's administration. NAFTA was a bad thing for Ohio.

http://www.politicalinaction.com

Posted by Brian | February 24, 2008 2:23 PM

I fnd t cl tht t's pssbl t rd wrds wtht vwls, dn't y? Jst b gld Mtt dsn't wrt ths wy.

Posted by mrsaturdaypants | February 24, 2008 2:26 PM

I read his book when he news broke of him considering a run, but before he declared his candidacy. I have to say it impressed me.

I identified with the mixed race man searching for racial identity in a country that is obsessed with racial authenticity. It rung true because it's my story too. When mutts like me get together and talk about these things, it's always the same story. It's the universal experience of growing up mixed race in America.

Obama's personal journey reflects his path toward a mature relationship with race. While you could deride it as obsession, I prefer to think of it as some sophisticated thinking about some of the most important issues facing America.

Posted by Brutal Hugger | February 24, 2008 2:30 PM

come on guys, to heir is human

Posted by JonE | February 24, 2008 2:55 PM

Can we stop criticizing the typos? The point was made in the first three comments.

Posted by David Broder | February 24, 2008 3:12 PM

Is Steve Sailer STILL trying to flog that point? Dreams from my Father is one of the bestselling nonfiction books of the past decade, and critically acclaimed from all corners. How completely bizarre to suggest otherwise.

Posted by Korha | February 24, 2008 3:17 PM

I read Obama's book, but that was back when it was called My Father's Dreams: A Story of Inheritance and Race by Deval Patrick.

As for Brian's complaints about NAFTA, once again: Barack Obama is on record as supporting NAFTA++.

See also this:

youtube.com/watch?v=9GQM-4q099A

Bush's original GuestWorker program was meant as a massive H1B scheme for almost every occupation. They even mentioned nurses and teachers. Despite the huge opening that gave the Dems, they didn't say a word against Bush's scheme. Both Dem candidates are continuing that same tack.

Posted by TLB | February 24, 2008 3:17 PM

Second-raters like Sailor have not the slightest notion of what someone with Obama's racial background experience growing up. The psychological pitfalls towards forging a solid identity in Hawaii or elsewhere would trip up someone blessed with a stable home environment uncanny emotional equillibrium, much less someone whose dad deserted him. It ain't easy to be a lot of things, but half-black in the years '61-79 had to be especially tough. Obama deserves enormous respect for the man he's become.

Posted by Trevor | February 24, 2008 3:24 PM

Well, Matt, your post demonstrates why I don't use voice recognition software, although I'm a hunt & peck typist. Too much garbled stuff gets through that isn't flagged by the spell checker.
On your actual point, it's time you gave an analysis of the book in which you would demonstrate WHY you thought be was a good writer. I know that it's a little more work but it would be much appreciated.

Posted by stonetools | February 24, 2008 4:13 PM

Wow, I don't know what the hell the problem is with you people. I can't even see most punctuational errors. Grammar errors I only notice if the wording is all messed up, and I had no trouble reading this post at all. I have no idea what's wrong with you.

Also Sailer's 'interpretation' was so dishonest that the editor of the magazine that published it resigned after it was published over his objections.

Posted by example | February 24, 2008 4:28 PM

"We like the spelling-afflicted Matt. It's part of the package around here."

"Grammar cops: Matt sometimes conflates homonyms when he blogs. Longtime readers no this and forgive him four it."

--Wow, Matt has his own firepups. Color me impressed.

Posted by lobstakilla | February 24, 2008 4:36 PM

Thanks for the link to the Tomasky piece, I missed it when it came out in print. Lots of interesting points there.

Posted by artappraiser | February 24, 2008 4:37 PM

As I've always said, "Dreams from my Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance" is obviously not ghostwritten. A professional hack would have turned down the literary elegance level and turned up the entertainment and interest level.

The excellence of Mr. Obama's prose style is never clearer that when it is compared to Mrs. Obama's prose, of which we now have a whopping big sample:

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2008/02/michelle-obamas-thesis-unblockaded.html

Yet, despite the contrast between Mr. Obama's artfulness and Mrs. Obama's artlessness, the agreement between these two early works on issues of race is profound, and quite contradictory to the image Obama has so carefully constructed for himself on the campaign trail as the postracial man who transcends race.

Perhaps they have changed their minds. But, shouldn't somebody, at least, ask them about it?

Posted by Steve Sailer | February 24, 2008 5:11 PM

So, Matt, now that you've read your candidate's 442 page book and have had ample time to think about it, are you going to offer _any_ opinions on it other than to remark on the uncontroversial -- that Obama has a graceful prose style? After all, you aren't exactly slow to express opinions on other topics. And yet you've spent many, many hours reading the Presidential frontrunner's autobiography, but you have almost nothing to say about it.

Curious ...

Posted by Steve Sailer | February 24, 2008 5:16 PM

To start the discussion of Obama's autobiography rolling, I'll ask Matt what he thinks of the reaction of Kevin Drum of the Washington Monthly to the book:

"You'd think that after reading an autobiography you'd get a better sense of the author. But I didn't. In fact, there's a very oddly detached quality to the book, almost as if he's describing somebody else. This is clearest in the disconnect between emotions and events: Obama routinely describes himself feeling the deepest, most painful emotions imaginable (one event is like a "fist in my stomach," for example, and he "still burned with the memory" a full year after a minor incident in college), but these feelings seem to be all out of proportion to the actual events of his life, which are generally pretty pedestrian. Is he describing his real feelings? Is he simply making the beginning writer's mistake of thinking that the way to convey emotion is to use lots of adjectives? Or is something else going on?

"Another oddity is that we get very little sense of what motivates him. In 1983, for example, he decided to become a community organizer, but says in the book only that he was "operating mainly on impulse." Even with the benefit of a decade of hindsight, the only explanation he can offer is that it was "part of that larger narrative, starting with my father and his father before him, my mother and her parents, my memories of Indonesia with its beggars and farmers and the loss of Lolo to power, on through Ray and Frank, Marcus and Regina; my move to New York; my father's death." That's not very helpful.

"There's just something very peculiar about the book. I can't put my finger entirely on what it is, but for all the overwrought language that Obama employs on page after page, there's very little insight into what he believes and what really makes him tick. It was almost as if Obama was admitting to his moodiness and angst less as a way of letting us know who he is than as a way of guarding against having to really tell us. By the time I was done, I felt like I knew less about him than before."

Posted by Steve Sailer | February 24, 2008 5:23 PM

Trevor
The cultural norm of Hawaii is someone with a multi-racial background. If anything, Obama's family fits the profile of typical families living in that state.

Posted by EWard | February 24, 2008 5:45 PM

If Bush was the candidate people voted for because they could imagine themselves having a beer with him, Obama is the candidate people vote for because they can imagine themselves having a Pinot Noir with him. Who cares what his opinions on NAFTA are, or whether he actually believes the post-partisan, post-racial pabulum he serves up to his adoring fans?

Posted by Fred | February 24, 2008 5:51 PM

"Steve Sailer thinks the book shows a man who is obsessed with race; that is because Steve is obsessed with race."

He could have also gotten that idea from the book's subtitle: "A Story of Race and Inheritance"

Obama didn't have to become ideologically African-American; he could have been post-racial simply by being true to his diverse, multiracial Hawaiian upbringing. But that wouldn't have given him a ladder to climb up South Side Chicago politics.

Posted by Juan | February 24, 2008 6:04 PM

Second-raters like Sailor have not the slightest notion of what someone with Obama's racial background experience growing up.

Sailer doesn't even seem to be able to have a notion of what "searching for your roots" is like in America. The reason Obama's autobiography is so popular is because his story is the same story as so many other Americans. It makes perfect sense form most of us to see why someone would want to seek after his roots and make peace with his identity, but Sailer regards it as some kind of anti-American enterprise, perhaps because he is simply indifferent to his roots or because they are so remote from him, his identity could not possibly be related to his origins, even if he wanted them to be. Meanwhile, everyone else seems to relate quite well to Obama's experience. I don't think Sailer is even capable of realizing that most Americans identify with Obama much more than they identify with Sailer.

The interesting story here is what it is about Sailer that sets him so far apart from so many other Americans that the story of Obama not only doesn't resonate with him but seems to have offended him.

Also, regarding Michelle Obama's undergraduate thesis: picking on a 21-year-old college student is really frivolous. Few people create the sort of tight, clear writing that I do, and academic writing is an acquired skill that few undergraduates have the need or the opportunity to explore.

Posted by Tyro | February 24, 2008 6:16 PM

Obama is obsessed with the same issues of "race and inheritance" that I've written about for 17 years. That's a big reason I find him fascinating.

It's poor Matt who is totally out to sea -- he wants to believe that Obamamania is all about a more sensible foreign policy, but it's actually all about a topic Matt's uncomfortable with: race. That's why he reads his man's 442-page life story and, after several months, he, who has something to say about almost everything, has nothing to say about it other than that it was well-written!

Posted by Steve Sailer | February 24, 2008 6:46 PM

Matthew: the homophones in you're post are quite annoying. Butt don't call me homophonophobic.

Posted by The Fool | February 24, 2008 6:54 PM

History will remember Hillary Clinton’s all female leadership team: Cheryl Mills, Tamera Luzzatto, Mandy Grunwald, Lissa Muscatine. Neera Tanden, Melanne Verveer, Capricia Marshall, Minyon Moore, Huma Abedin, Patti Solis Doyle, Ann Lewis and others, as vastly overrated and preeminently unqualified – except perhaps to manufacture anti-Clinton hysteria, knit hair shirts (blouses), and pledge allegiance to their benefactor – slumber party politics. Hillary’s colossal failure of imagination seems to stem from the fact that she made her bones on Richard Nixon, but then proceeded to model her political life on Nixon’s. Although, burning through tens of millions of dollars of other people’s money on frivolities, political non-sequiturs and hyperbole, is signature Clinton. Furthermore, I wrote EVERY WORD of this (LOL). We saw what happened to Hollywood when the writers walked out. Compelling and not so compelling a narrative; that’s the blog-o-sphere: http://theseedsof9-11.com

Posted by Peggy McGilligan | February 24, 2008 6:58 PM

A thought for those commenters here obsessed with Matt's typos, malapropisms, etc.:

Have you considered that this sloppiness is deliberate? To me, it seems to be of a piece with the recent revision of Matt's bio on this site: gone is the mention of him graduating magna cum laude. It also reminds me of George H.W. Bush's seemingly deliberate malapropisms, which appeared to be attempts to soften the edges of his Ivy League, elite, background.

I'm sure it would be no trouble for Matt to keep up the same volume of posts and still "create the sort of tight, clear writing" that Tyro does.

Posted by Fred | February 24, 2008 7:13 PM

he wants to believe that Obamamania is all about a more sensible foreign policy, but it's actually all about a topic Matt's uncomfortable with: race.

Funny how that's news to everyone with Obamamania. But I do have to admit, whenever I really want to know what I'm thinking, I ask Steve Sailer.

Posted by J.B. | February 24, 2008 7:59 PM

Is this typical for wingnut hacks (the ones who are actually published somewhere) to come around commenting repeatedly and harassing the blog host? It seems undignified. And can we get Jonah to do it? Because I would really, really like him to put in an appearance at Sadly, No!.

Posted by Jen | February 24, 2008 8:24 PM

Yah. Wasn't about race for me either. It actually was about a more sensible foreign policy, plus I agree with Obama's view that ideologues get it wrong a lot of the time (on the left and right). I, too, tend to agree with the left more than the right, but I think the right has a lot of valid criticisms of leftest policies. I also hate identity politics. So, I want change, not just from the Bush administration, but from my parents style of politics.

Posted by Z | February 24, 2008 8:27 PM

Hasn't it been years since Sailor started making foreboding pronouncements about Dreams From My Father, yet I seem to have forgotten the insight yielded by his obsessive scrutiny.

Posted by Lucy | February 24, 2008 8:34 PM

"Trevor
The cultural norm of Hawaii is someone with a multi-racial background. If anything, Obama's family fits the profile of typical families living in that state."

Having gone to high school in the seventies in Hawaii, I know that both Steve Sailer and Eward are wrong about race relations in Hawaii. Hawaii is an asian/polynesian state. The people that are least accepted are whites and blacks in that order. And it was not a post racial paradise. I grew up in Oakland CA and went to majority black schools and then moved to Hawaii. The level of racial tensions were about the same in both places. And traditionally, in amaerica people with black and white parents are mixed race only in their own experience. Everyone else just sees them as light skin blacks.

And for those of you who don't know Steve Sailer, he's got plenty of crap out there on the internet. His work on vdare.com is pretty typical. Vdare is sort of a prowhite culture/anti immigration site. It's named for the first white child born on the north american continent or something and it's symbol is a white deer. If you read his review of Obama's book and the other crap you will soon start to get the feeling that Steve doesn't like black people. He has basically made a career of not likeing black people. He hides his dislike with this posture of scientific curosity. He is a fascinated student of the race. Whatever. He is the world's greatest race troll and he shows up everywhere that race, especially african americans, is mentioned.

Posted by cw | February 24, 2008 8:55 PM

I never knew what Steve Sailer's day job was. Film critic for the American Conservative. Sorta like being wine critic for the Women's Christian Temperance Union. Good for him fir finding a niche. As for his hobby, cw's got it covered. He's David Duke with a better vocabulary.

Posted by tgb1000 | February 24, 2008 9:59 PM

CW
I was born in Hawaii, and I didn't say it was a post racial paradise. It has its ethnic problems like many areas. However, it is more multicultural than many other places. Many families beyond the Asian Polynesian cultures are interracially mixed through marriage.

Posted by EWard | February 24, 2008 11:17 PM

Trevor was saying that he thought Obama would have had a hard time with his racial identity in that period of his life. In your reply to Trevor you said that Obama's family fit the cultural norm in Hawaii, implying that it was a good place to grow up mixed race becasue there were lot's of mixed race people. I thought that was misleading. It makes it sound like Obama was just another chinese/hawaiian/filipino mix, which in Hawaii is pretty mych just Local. But I'm pretty sure Obama would have been seen solely as black there. I don't think living in Hawaii would be of that much help for a white/black child trying to figure out his racial identity.

The post racial stuff was mostly directed at Steve Sailers review, I guess, in which he makes some assumptions about Hawaii that are uniformed.

Posted by cw | February 24, 2008 11:46 PM

I'm a teacher in Korea. When my students hit teenage and get sullen, they start to do deliberately sloppy work to show that they're too cool for school. I assume Matt refuses to even glance over what he's written before pulling the trigger and launching it onto the web for the same reason. On a more sinister / conspiracy bent, it almost looks like he deliberately makes those silly errors out of some kind of hipster pride.

Posted by aleks | February 25, 2008 5:09 AM

So we can add "like a sullen Korean teenager" to "you remind me of Charles Lindberg" etc in the list of unflattering descriptions of the mighty Yglesias.

Posted by otto | February 25, 2008 8:45 AM

Personally, what I find most annoying about MY's writing is that 99% of the time he refuses to correct the errors once they are pointed out. Sullivan and Greenwald occasionally make typos/grammar mistakes, but they correct them almost immediately. Matt leaves them there even after 40 people have pointed them out, as if to say, "Bite me."
Posted by jim

I don't know, if we were talking about one or two errors per day or even per post I might agree with you, but as it is, the thread would look confusing with 40 people referring to stuff in the post that have been edited out.

More generally, I agree that this isn't that big a deal; I think it's at least partially intentional, as a running joke or something. If he wants to troll his own blog, this seems like a much funnier and more harmless way to do it than linking to McArdle or Sailer. And speaking of whom —

Also Sailer's 'interpretation' was so dishonest that the editor of the magazine that published it resigned after it was published over his objections.
Posted by example

Wow, you're right. I didn't know that, but after a little Googling I found an article about it by the ex-editor. Impressive stuff.

But it was the Obama piece that revealed the office’s political divisions to be unworkable. The weekend after Kara and Scott dismissed my objections to Sailer’s essay, I read Dreams From My Father. I realized that, in addition to the racist associations he employs, Sailer frequently quotes Obama out of context and makes assertions about Obama’s racial identity that the book flatly contradicts.

For example, Sailer relates an anecdote from the book in which Obama’s white grandmother wants a ride to work because she had been threatened by a black panhandler while waiting for the bus the day before. Obama “is outraged—at his grandparents,” according to Sailer, who offers the story as further evidence of Obama’s anger toward his white family. But in the book the situation is far more nuanced than Sailer lets on. In fact, it’s Obama’s grandfather who’s outraged that his wife was scared because, in her words, “the fella was black.” Obama describes these words as “a fist in my stomach.” But he tells his grandfather that although his grandmother’s attitude bothered him, “Toot’s fears would … pass and we should give her a ride in the meantime.” Putting his hand on his grandfather’s shoulder, he says it’s all right, that he understands.

Posted by Cyrus | February 25, 2008 10:25 AM

Steve Sailer's idiosyncratic interpretation of Obama's book tells us very little about Obama, and a great deal about Steve Sailer -- a race-obsessed mediocre writer who gets increasingly hackish the more he writes about ancestry and ethnicity, which may reflect the fact he's adopted and likely has a mixed-ethnicity background himself.

But I gotta say – commentors to this post are giving Sailer's view the respect they deserve – the vast majority of comments here are on Matthew’s typographical errors.

Posted by SailerFan | February 25, 2008 11:47 AM

Gee, how did the American Conservative manage to keep going after "the editor" (referenced in Cyrus's post above) cleaned out his desk and left after someone decided to publish Sailer's piece?

Posted by TACreader | February 25, 2008 1:55 PM

Gee, how did the American Conservative manage to keep going after "the editor" (referenced in Cyrus's post above) cleaned out his desk and left after someone decided to publish Sailer's piece?

Well, this is just a shot in the dark you understand, but I wonder if they might have hired somebody else?

Posted by Cyrus | February 25, 2008 5:03 PM

Just between us, because no one on this thread cares about this or should, but do you really think "the editor" referenced here was "the editor" or maybe a 24 year old kid in his first job making 28K a year who wasn't such an important part of the magazine?

Posted by TACreader | February 25, 2008 6:56 PM