No N&O “thinking” in this post

A few years ago a person with quite a bit of formal education said, referring to the Raleigh News & Observer’s editorials:

”I like reading them. They’re so informative and help me with my thinking."

I thought about that person today as I read Christopher Hitchens’ latest at Slate.

It began:

To put it squarely and bluntly, is it because he is or is it because he isn't?

To phrase it another way, is it because of what he says or what he doesn't say?

Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois is the current beneficiary of a tsunami of drool.

He sometimes claims credit on behalf of all Americans regardless of race, color, creed, blah blah blah, though his recent speeches appear also to claim a victory for blackness while his supporters—most especially the white ones—sob happily that at last we can have an African-American chief executive

Off to the side, snarling with barely concealed rage, are the Clinton machine-minders, who, having failed to ignite the same kind of identity excitement with an aging and resentful female, are perhaps wishing that they had made more of her errant husband having already been "our first black president."

Or perhaps not.

Isn't there something pathetic and embarrassing about this emphasis on shade?

And why is a man with a white mother considered to be "black," anyway? Is it for this that we fought so hard to get over Plessy v. Ferguson?

Would we accept, if Obama's mother had also been Jewish, that he would therefore be the first Jewish president?

The more that people claim Obama's mere identity to be a "breakthrough," the more they demonstrate that they have failed to emancipate themselves from the original categories of identity that acted as a fetter upon clear thought.[...]

The rest of Hitchens’ article is here.

I hope you read it.

Right now I just want to call it to your attention because it’s such an informative article that made me think.

I don’t expect to find anything like it in the N&O’s editorial column.

How about in your local newspaper’s editorial column? Will you find anything like it there?

And can we all agree none of us will find anything as thoughtful and informative in the editorial columns of the NYT, LAT and Boston Globe as what Hitchens wrote at Slate?

Now I’m going to watch the rest of the Ohio State-LSU game.

OSU’s a great school but I’m pulling for the Tigers because I’ve lots of family members with LSU ties.