Barack Obama, Telemarketer

The presidential campaign is one of myth-building and history-harvesting. In the post-Nixon-Kennedy debate, People magazine world in which we live, political qualifications are made up of personal narratives. So Chicago gal Lynn Sweet at the Sun-Times is the one on the ground trying to get a sense of who Barack and Michelle Obama actually are, aside from their busy myth machine. (For instance: The myth is that Obama was, among other things, an exemplary law school teacher; the fact is, according to some students, he was barely present and barely attentive.) Sweet goes the extra mile: Barack Obama is actually a telemarketer. Not only that: He's a telemarketer who thinks the New York Times is an expensive, elitist luxury!