As you're probably aware, last week's New Yorker cover, which depicted Barack Obama as a Muslim jihadist, made a big splash, and was rebuked by both conservatives and democrats.

The sensation surrounding the cover eclipsed its story, which documents Obama's rise in the corrupt and segregated Chicago-political scene. Like most of Ryan Lizza's work, "Making It: How Chicago Shaped Obama" is wordy and boring. Various characters weave in and out of the article, and since you haven't heard of many of them before and probably won't again, it's a task keeping track of who is who and how they relate to the subject. But the figures are effective in informing the reader of Chicago's delicate balance of power and the high-wire-balancing act involved in getting elected there.

In some respects, Lizza's Obama is christ-like: He materialized from nowhere (although his mother was certainly no virgin as you'll read in Dreams From My Father) to aid in the struggle of a disenchanted people whose unifying principle is worship. Also, the middle of his life is uninteresting, so just don't pay any attention to it.

Unlike christ, Obama knows that smooth-talking, power-hungry men inherit the Earth. And the whole "peacemakers are the children of god" thing? Forget about it: He "isn't opposed to war in all circumstances," and asserts that his grandfather, who enlisted after Pearl Harbor was bombed, did not fight "in vain." After all, the December 7th, 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor was a surprise attack, even though we had successfully been using RADAR for seven years.

Anyway, Lizza's article is about as long as The Old Man and The Sea. In summation, Obama ventured to Chicago to become powerful. He started his grassroots organization at the lowest possible level before bike messengers, squatters and junkies: the church. Joining Jeremiah Wright's particular church was a shrewdly calculated maneuver -- he realized
it was Chicago's best politically connected place of worship. (That should be an oxymoron, but isn't.) And when he delivered speeches -- this is the only place where Lizza sticks a carrot in our faces -- they tended to "read as if [they] had been written for a much bigger audience." There's nothing uber-nefarious about that final anecdote, though it is a trait commonly referenced by Hitler's biograhers.

Well, we all know where the skinny black kid with the funny name is today. However, there are two sentences in the article that, in spite of their objectivity, should raise your brow: "When he was a community organizer, he channeled his work through Chicago's churches, because they were the main bases of power on the South Side. He was an agnostic when he started, and the work led him to become a practicing Christian."

What a load of bullshit. Religion, especially the organized kind, fosters social stability through vague moral precepts and fables. To paraphrase Carl Sagan, if there exists a convincing doctrine that the next life is a paradise and the current one doesn't matter, that it really is some sort of test, there is little reason for any society's ruling class to not espouse itself to it. You can't head the ruling class without drinking the Kool-Aid, and that's the only thing that Obama has proven so far. - SB