Goldman’s fuzzy picture

Re “Voting in the age of ‘Dr. Phil,’ ” Opinion, Jan. 8

If Jonah Goldberg is going to assert that our presidential politics are in some age of “Oprah” and “Dr. Phil,” he should be expected to examine, however briefly, all presidents actually elected in this so-called age. That would be George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and the current President Bush, if you date the trend from Oprah Winfrey’s 1986 emergence on the national scene. Curiously, only Clinton gets mention in the column.

Goldberg also touts the just-the-facts approach of businessmen as the alternative to whatever this supposed “Oprah” phenomenon represents, but he fails to reference that President Bush is a Harvard MBA holder and former chief executive, nor that George H.W. Bush holds an economics degree from Yale and headed an oil firm. Did you really publish this thinking it would illuminate the subject to any degree?

James McCarthy

Granada Hills

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The presidential race is not about issues; it is about race. Nowhere does Goldberg refer to that fact. The hysteria over Barack Obama is because he is black, not because of “hope.” People feel embarrassed to say outright that they want a black man as president to validate themselves as good Americans; free at last, free at last of all those old demons of racial prejudice.

Curt Thiele de Leon

Pacific Palisades