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The Courtier Chronicles

From the Scrapbook.

Nov 17, 2008, Vol. 14, No. 09
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The Courtier Chronicles

It's been difficult, it really has, but THE SCRAPBOOK has read every last bit of triumphalist commentary on Barack Obama's election. The International Code of Punditry compels us. Some of the analysis, we are happy to report, has been sober and thought-provoking. And there's no doubt that the election of America's first black president is a historic milestone.

But most of the punditry has been--and we say this with as much understatement as we can muster--a bunch of bull. So we've been keeping a file of the over-the-top reactions to The One's ascendance. Here are some of the worst. Be prepared to gag.

"Some princes are born in palaces. Some are born in mangers. But a few are born in the imagination, out of scraps of history and hope. Barack Obama never talks about how people see him: I'm not the one making history, he said every chance he got. You are. Yet as he looked out Tuesday night through the bulletproof glass, in a park named for a Civil War general, he had to see the truth on people's faces. We are the ones we've been waiting for, he liked to say, but people were waiting for him, waiting for someone to finish what a King began. .  .  .

"Barack Hussein Obama did not win because of the color of his skin. Nor did he win in spite of it. He won because at a very dangerous moment in the life of a still young country, more people than have ever spoken before came together to try to save it. And that was a victory all its own."

--Time editor-at-large Nancy Gibbs in that magazine's November 17 issue.

"Yes, it is time to hope again.

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