As someone who remembers when he was a political ‘commentator’ on the local news in Los Angeles, let me assure you, he is exactly that- and always has been. no answer is too tortured for him if it sticks to the script.

I’m not wistfully hearkening back to the “good old days” notion that we should get back to “the way we were” — times change, and perhaps predominently due to the internet, we relate more intensly, more quickly, and without any hesitation, than we ever did before. So, maybe one inevitable byproduct of that is the preservation (e.g., YouTube) of more out-and-out “blurts” — comments or rants that one might have decided not to say, given a little breather.

I honestly do not recall a prior time when so many people whose views or entertainment I might otherwise consider, are expressing such strange, and frequently poisonous notions about what they “know” public figures are thinking —e.g., “Bush derangement syndrome.” Press, Letterman, Olberman, to name a few . . . it’s a very long list.

Now, I don’t know whether your work as a therapist leads you to really understand better what makes people click, or whether it actually gives you a greater appreciation for how little we know about one another. But I think you have taken a very good “stab” at undermining Press’s risible claim.

But I am curious about what prompts a man like Bill Press to so confidently assert that the “celebrity ad” is racist? His explanation is so tortured that it is actually quite laughable. It was my immediate reaction when I started reading it. Now, I can imagine someone writing such palpable nonesense in a fit of passionate intensity, and then getting up and reading it again the next morning over a cup of coffee. At that point, it would be promptly sent to the cyberspace graveyard, with a large sigh of relief at having dodged the bullet of making a fool of one’s self. Bit not with Bill Press.

Is Press just a willing partisan tool who is offering his way of turning the around an emerging trend — to poke a little well-deserved fun at Obama? Is Press’s thinking so twisted that he really believes what he is saying?

I just cannot imagine ever hitting the “publish” button on such rubbish. But it seems to me that more and more people, even ones with reputations to uphold, cross that existential threshold, and do make similarly preposterous claims every day.

Obama would be fine if he weren’t interviewing for arguably the most important job on the planet. There was a time when even he knew better:

“I got elected to the U.S. Senate. I haven’t done anything yet.” –Obama, Washington Post, Feb25, 2005.

Not! It is what it is, just what you see: juxtaposition of Obama with other vapid, empty people (who both happen to be women, I believe, only because they fit the role) who are celebrities because. Their celebrity feeds their increasing celebrity. Why people are in awe? THAT’S the question.

Done. No between the lines. No sexual or racist overtones — or undertones. Geez……..

Let him be the “One’ to destroy himself. Hegelian irony could be so fitting.

Just as that New Yorker cartoon cover of Barack and Michelle Obama as Islamist terrorist and 60s “revolutionary” was meant to be about the hysteria of extremist Obama critics, so “Celebs” is meant to be about the hysteria of extremist Obama advocates. Neither has anything to do with Obama per se, beyond his ability to inhabit the superstar role of what Virginial Postrel has called “the fresh young prince onto whom Democrats project their hopes and dreams.”

I’m able by means of a secret charm