Until I read this Michael Wolff piece, I hadn't known that Barack Obama recently sat down to dinner with George Will, Charles Krauthammer, David Brooks, and Bill Kristol. So: thanks to Wolff for that.

What's perplexing, though, is Wolff's description of Obama's dining partners:

By dining at George Will’s house with New York Times columnists William Kristol and David Brooks, and the Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer, he’s single-handedly revived these guys' careers

When the Times announced Bono's hiring as an op-ed columnist, editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal had this to say: “Bono is a great addition to our Op-Ed line-up. He is an extraordinary man who thinks deeply about his art and the major issues confronting the world. His writing will reflect that.”

Writing for the New York Post, former Phoenix reporter Seth Gitell does an excellent job analyzing the implications of Barack Obama's big win from a politico-racial perspective. There are several sharp insights in the piece, but one in particular--involving how Obama's victory affects our standing in the world--struck me as especially significant: