The man underneath

Salon's Mary Elizabeth Williams shares an insight about Obama gleaned from reading a new book about his mother: "Obama's is not the old-fashioned, Clintonesque story of the small town kid who made good, nor is he that other old-fashioned tale, of the young lion from a Kennedy or Bush political dynasty. He is a new -- and increasingly more common -- 21st-century boy. The knee-jerk disdain so many of his critics have for him can be traced largely to his worldliness – he's a man who, of necessity, was brought up not to be Joe the Plumber but a citizen of the planet."