Met the new boss

I enjoyed staying up with friends last night to meet the new boss, Barack Obama. The most encouraging words I heard: “This victory alone is not the change we seek.”

Obama infomercial

Well, this is something new in a presidential campaign: a half-hour television program. Will we see more of these in the future? Is this going to become a minimum requirement to win the White House? It was made possible by Obama’s record-setting fundraising. Public financing of presidential campaigns (through government) is dead. Future campaigns will […]

The myth of Obama’s “apostasy”

Historical myths and simplifications about a monolithic “Islamic world” are a besetting problem in the U.S. media, and I think professional historians should be concerned — especially when a member of the profession is responsible for sowing confusion in the first place, as in this case. The story, in brief, is that the world’s Muslims […]