On a contrarian roll …

… The Question the Times Should Have Asked ‘Writer’ Barack Obama | The American Spectator.

Unlike Kakutani, when author Paul Watkins reviewed Dreams for the Times in 1995, he judged the book on its merits. Unaware that Obama one day would become the beau idéal of progressive America, Watkins failed to serve up a single quote the aspiring author could put on a book jacket. The most usable one — “At a young age and without much experience as a writer, Barack Obama has bravely tackled the complexities of his remarkable upbringing” — damns with faint praise. As Watkins understood, Dreams, though lyrical in parts, is not all that good.