Exhibit 26.8

Barack Obama and LeBron James




(I had a very long drive and, given how the flipbook passing of corn rows can no longer hold my imagination, I had time to think about this sort of nonsense. I did not, apparently, have enough time to consider how silly it would be to actually share these thoughts. As always, I'm sorry).

Over the two weeks I spent in New York, the most passionate lamentation I heard concerned voting for Barack Obama. The speaker's objection was to the president's handling of the country's various wars though it just as easily could have been the conceived watering down of the healthcare reform bill or the somewhat weaker than desired new financial regulations bill or the failure to extend unemployment benefits or the situation in the Gulf or... You get the idea. There seems to be a growing sentiment that the Obama presidency has been a disappointment if not an outright failure because a lot of people were casting their votes for an uncompromisingly liberal administration. That this White House has been so willing to extend many of George W. Bush's foreign policy priorities, that they've repeatedly negotiated behind closed doors with big business to weaken their two major legislative accomplishments, that they did not immediately shut out BP from responding to the Gulf disaster, they they kowtow to conservative Democrats who are undercutting their goals...well, a lot of his supporters feel like he's turned his back on them.

Which brings us, ridiculously, to LeBron James. The second most heartfelt regret I heard regarded James moving to the Miami Heat--effectively deciding to take a backseat to Dwyane Wade in order to form a super team--and how the speaker had, only the day before, loved LeBron James. James, instead of taking the Michael Jordan/Larry Bird/Magic Johnson root and trying to systematically destroy and humiliate one's biggest competitors, decided he'd rather join forces, choosing, at the cost of removing himself from consideration as the greatest player of all time, to play with his friends. It's a stunning decision, one that has basically turned James from the most popular player in basketball to maybe the most hated (at least outside of South Beach), and it feels like a betrayal.

And I guess what I thought about as I drove through, I don't know, Iowa, is how the disappointment in both cases is all about how we project certain qualities on public figures they are telling us explicitly they don't have. And we do this selfishly and childishly and, more than anything, historically. It's just easier for us to compare one figure to another when there's little else to go on. A great many of Obama voters thought they were voting for bizzarro-George W. Bush, a leftwing ideologue who not only reverse all the profoundly objectionable Bush-era policies but be as equally aggressive as the former president in checking off as many items from the party's wishlist as possible. And we thought this not because of anything Obama said during the campaign (though he certainly didn't mind anyone thinking that either) but because after the last eight years any Democratic candidate couldn't help but be seen as Bush's counterweight. Despite all the talk of bringing Washington together and moving beyond partisanship, we thought we were voting for exactly partisan politics only our partisan politics.

Similarly, James confuses us for having occupied a space in our consciousness that he never occupied in real life. All we heard about him since the time he was in high school was that he's the next Michael Jordan. Everyone was excited by this--fans, the NBA, even LeBron James (he wore the number 23). Well, at some point, LeBron James realized he's not Michael Jordan. In a vacuum, he may be a better basketball player, but he hasn't got Jordan's competitiveness (or at least his selfishness), and everything he's done since he's been in the league suggested as much (deferring too much, not taking over playoff series, seeming as interested in becoming a billionaire as in winning titles, etc.). And when he finally makes the decision to focus on winning, we're furious because it doesn't fit in with the role we'd given him. He's supposed to be the next Jordan not the next...well, there we go again. Pippen? James Worthy? LeBron can't just be LeBron, at least not yet, because we have no idea who LeBron is. We'll decide that when he's out of the public eye, right before we've defined him for good, facts be damned. We'll do the same thing with Obama (look at the way Republicans talk about Reagan with little regard for his actual politics).

We are simply too removed to be able to form deep understandings of figures willing to complicate our drive to define them (I'm not at all interested in implicating contemporary culture for this, if anything these sort of projections were much worse before mass media). And so LeBron will win shared championships just like Obama passed a middle-of-the-road healthcare bill, but nobody will be completely happy because they don't fit the narratives we've settled on. So we'll come up with new narratives around their equivocation and compromises, at least until they give us reasons to change our mind. Meanwhile, there are the George W. Bushs and Kobe Bryants of the world who act so completely as we expect that there's something shameful in the relief that, though we may not like them, we understand them.

Exhibit 17.25

Characters Played by John Wayne (1934-1926)

Chris Morrell
John Tobin
Rod Drew
U.S. Marshal John Travers
Randy Bowers
John Weston
John Carruthers
Ted Hayden, posing as Gat Ganns
Jerry Mason
John Brant (using alias John Smith)
Student greeting Phil
Singin' Sandy Saunders
Captain John Holmes
Jimmy McCoy Jr.
Dick Wallace
Smith John Bishop
Co-pilot in Wreck
Lt. Tom Wayne
John Trent
John Mason
Deputy Sheriff John Steele
Football Player
John Drury
Larry Baker
Buzz Kinney
Duke
Steve Pickett
Craig McCoy
Dusty Rhodes
Clint Turner
Richard Thorpe as a corpse
Lt. Bob Denton
Gordon Wales
Peter Brooks
Breck Coleman
Bit Part
Lumberjack
Extra
Radioman on surface
Extra
Bill (midshipman)
Pete Donahue
Extra
Extra
Flood Extra
Horse Race Spectator/Condemned Man in Flashback
Extra
Extra
Football Player/Extra in Stands Extra
Extra
Guard
Yale Football Player

Exhibit 17.16

Characters Played by John Wayne (1949-1935)

Sgt. John M. Stryker
Capt. Nathan Cutting Brittles
John Breen
Capt. Ralls
Robert Marmaduke Hightower
Thomas Dunson
Capt. Kirby York
Johnny Munroe
Quirt Evans
Rusty Thomas
John Devlin
Lt. JG 'Rusty' Ryan
Col. Joseph Madden
Duke Fergus
Rocklin
Lt. Cmdr. Wedge Donovan
Daniel F. Somers
Duke Hudkins
Pat Talbot
Charles 'Pittsburgh' Markham/Charles Ellis
Capt. Jim Gordon
Tom Craig
Roy Glennister
Captain Jack Stuart
Jackson Morgan
Young Matt
John Reynolds
Lynn Hollister
Lt. Dan Brent Olsen
John Phillips
Bob Seton
Smith
Stony Brooke
Stony Brooke
Stony Brooke
Stony Brooke
The Ringo Kid
Stony Brooke
Stony Brooke
Stony Brooke
Stony Brooke
Dare Rudd
Duke Slade
Johnny Hansen
Bob Adams
Biff Smith
Pat Glendon
'Bos'n' Bob Randall
John Blair
Captain John Ashley
John Clayborn
John Tipton
Capt John Delmont
John Middleton, aka John Allen
John Dawson
John Wyatt
John Wyatt aka John Rogers
John Mason
John Scott, aka John Jones
John Martin
John Higgins

Exhibit 17.11

Characters Played by John Wayne (1976-1950)

J.B. Books aka John Bernard Books
Rooster Cogburn
Lt. Brannigan
Det. Lt. Lon McQ
U.S. Marshal J.D. Cahill Lane
Wil Andersen
Jacob McCandles
Col. Cord McNally
John Simpson Chisum
Col. John Henry Thomas
Marshall Reuben J. 'Rooster' Cogburn
Chance Buckman
Col. Mike Kirby
Taw Jackson
Cole Thornton
Gen. Mike Randolph
John Elder
Capt. Rockwell Torrey
Centurion at crucifixion
Matt Masters
George Washington McLintock
Michael Patrick 'Guns' Donovan
Sergeant-Umpire in Korea
Lt. Col. Benjamin Vandervoort
Sean Mercer
Tom Doniphon
Ranger Capt. Jake Cutter
Sam McCord
Col. Davy Crockett
Col. John Marlowe
Sheriff John T. Chance
Townsend Harris
Joe January
Col. Jim Shannon
Frank W. 'Spig' Wead
Ethan Edwards
Temujin, later Genghis Khan
Capt. Tom Wilder
Capt. Karl Ehrlich
Dan Roman
Hondo Lane
Capt. Dooley
Stephen 'Steve' Aloysius Williams
Big Jim McLain
Sean Thornton
Narrator
Maj. Daniel Xavier Kirby
Lt Cmdr. Duke E. Gifford
Lt. Col. Kirby Yorke

Exhibit 5.26

It's caucus night tonight and so far this mostly meaningless yet horribly fun spotlight momentarily gracing Iowa is once again delivering exactly what it promises. I say mostly meaningless because what Iowa does--and it's debatable if this is a good thing--is weed out candidates by sucking up their money and time before the real voting starts. In other words, see you, Bill Richardson and Chris Dodd. This isn't goodbye, Bill, it's just so long until the V.P. talk starts.

The other thing Iowa does is provide another little, politely Midwestern land mine for less polished candidates. Who is going to undergo this election's Howard Dean like flameout? It's not my place to guess, but I'm taking a long look at you, Mike Huckabee. That guy has more than a few of Chekhov's guns on the wall. It's still the first act, but that guy says some really bizarre stuff without provocation. Once the attention really shifts to him, look out. I honestly think he is capable of constructing a sentence that somehow manages to offend, confuse, and frighten every single American.

Meaningless prediction: Obama and Huckabee win, a 2nd place showing for Hillary (which she'll claim as a victory because many now expect her to take 3rd), and a slightly stronger than expected showing for Ron Paul and Joe Biden though nothing truly shocking. Realize, those are pretty much everyone's predictions.