In TNR, Michelle Cottle considers the question of whether the president is "cool":
If one were to gather together a dozen of our society's key arbiters of cool--ad execs, movie stars, fashion designers, music critics, pollsters, suburban tweens--and instruct them to generate the profile of a "cool" politician, what are the odds that their efforts would result in a gangly, jug-eared, overeducated, workaholic with a fondness for Scrabble? Not to denigrate our freshly minted president, but, when you tick through some of the basics, Barack Obama comes across as an inveterate dork. It's not just that the guy is a double-Ivied academic; he is painfully wonky with hard-core professorial tendencies. If what we've witnessed thus far of his dancing is any indication, he is somewhat rhythmically challenged. His favorite book is Moby-Dick. His favorite TV program growing up was "MASH," though "The Dick Van Dyke Show" was right up there. He has read at least six Harry Potter tomes. Perhaps most damning, he is a collector of comics--Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian--a tidbit that prompted the editor-in-chief of Marvel to publicly enthuse: "This has got to be the coolest thing on Planet Earth for us. The commander-in-chief is actually a nerd-in-chief."On the other hand, he's calm, and he plays basketball. Posted by Stephen Silver at February 23, 2009 09:10 PM