Wit and wisdom

Great piece in the New York Times Magazine about Obama's sense of humor. I particularly like this passage:

But perhaps the more jarring if overlooked moment in Obama’s answer came just before that, when he endeavored to cast himself in the place of his friend Henry Louis Gates Jr., whose trouble began when he needed to break into his own home. “I mean, if I was trying to jigger into — well, I guess this is my house now, so it probably wouldn’t happen,” the president said. Then he flashed a mischievous grin and added, “Here I’d get shot.”

And this one:

What makes Obama’s humor more combustible isn’t just its spontaneity but also its distinctly postmodern, Seinfeldian premise. There’s an absurdist quality to the president’s less serious side, a sense that he woke up this morning to find himself occupying this singularly bizarre place in American life and that he has just now become aware that he’s the only sane guy in the room.