Just visiting your blog for the first time, drawn by your Mailer obit, which I thought was a reasonable piece though I disagreed with much of it. But on reading this post I had to ask what you have in mind in impishly writing “Barack Hussein Obama”? I look at your column of serious books on the left of this page, full–apparently–of gravity and respect for civilization and tradition, and then I see you descending into race-baiting name calling. Do you think his middle name reveals some sinister, hidden truth about him? That perhaps he’s not one of us? I have a hard time reading that any other way, and have a hard time imagining you as a serious critic when I read it.