Joel Mathis

Three thoughts about Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me”: • This is a relentlessly political book — how could it not be? — and yet attempts to respond to the book from within the typical left-right Democratic-Republican construct of punditry seem to be insufficient to me — they come to the book, as with other political debates, without curiosity, for the sake of trying to win an argument. Let’s try again. This is an American black man telling us how he perceives living as a black man in America today: It contains no policy prescriptions, no endorsement of party or candidate, no 10-point campaign for better living. We haven’t found the right way to talk about this book yet.

At National Review , Rich Lowr y is grumpy: Over at PowerLine, John Hinderaker makes a great catch: CNN describes the Arizona immigration law as "polarizing." John asks why the health-care bill was never described that way, even though it too brought protestors into the streets and was actually, in contrast to the Arizona bill, opposed by most people? To ask the question is to answer it. I sent Mr. Lowry a note: A Google search for "health care bill polarizing" gets 476,000 results . A GoogleNews search for the same term gets more than 600 results . You say that "to ask the question is to answer it," but trying to answer it might've provided you a different result.