Do you think he smoked a cigarette when he was done?

I would be embarrassed to have an Esquire magazine in my house.
And that was before I read this.

While Obama's story is ancient, it is also utterly contemporary, perfectly of the moment. His gift — and it is a gift that makes him emblematic — is that he inhabits all these roles without being limited by them. He has managed, miraculously, to remain something of an outsider while being the president of the United States of America, the most inside man in the world. He's African-American, but he's not African-American. He's from Chicago, but he's from Hawaii.

Yeah, yeah.  He's liquid, but he's solid.  He's tall while being short.  He's non-threateningly threatening.  He has balls of steel yet he's made of gold.  He's man, but he's woman, and gay while being perfectly straight.   I'm so effing deep.

A REAL Original
American

Beyond all of the self-pleasuring Stephen Marche must have done while writing this, I was quite surprised to hear that Walt Whitman was "the Original American".

Never cottoned to Whitman, no matter how hard my literature professors tried to cram him down my throat.  Bleah!

Original American my asterisk.