The only way that residual racist feelings could affect legislation, in my opinion, is through a lack of priorities, from not doing things.

No longer can we measure compassion by how much we spend on poverty but how many people we help to lift out of poverty.

Obama is seen as very, very cool. I think a lot of people find him sexy.

I think even in today's America, there's a sense that there's something vaguely sexy about cigarettes.

Every third person in the world is a drama queen. And crying 'victim,' especially when you're not really a victim in any real way, feels good. It feels good to cry victim if you're not one.

Politics is work. Hiphop is music. The idea that hiphop, because it makes the body feel good to move to it and it makes the soul feel good to hear out angry young black men, can be transmuted into changing the world is narcotic but nonsensical. Wherever hiphop is ever "going," we can be sure it will not be in a constructive direction, anymore than fashions in the color of cars. And it shouldn't "concern" us in the least.

I don't think that we really know a whole lot about Barack Obama at all that you would really call distinctive.