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Matthew Yglesias

Matthew Yglesias - Matthew Yglesias is a fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
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Matthew Yglesias is a fellow at the Center for American Progress. His first book, with the working title Heads in the Sand: Iraq and the Strange Death of Liberal Internationalism, scheduled to be published next spring by John Wiley and co., deals with the Democratic Party's struggle to find a post-9/11 foreign policy, focusing primarily on the rise and (hopefully) fall of the liberal hawk movement.

Previously, he was a staff writer at The American Prospect and an Associate Editor at TPM Media, where he contributed to the group blogs Tapped and TPMCafe. His main blog, now at The Atlantic, has existed in various forms since the dark ages of the blogosphere in January 2002.

His writing has appeared in The Guardian, Slate, The New Republic, and The Washington Monthly, and he is a regular on BloggingHeads.tv and makes the occasional radio or television appearance.

Desperately out of touch with the American mainstream, Yglesias was born and raised in Manhattan and studied philosophy at Harvard where he was editor in chief of The Harvard Independent, a campus alternative weekly.

His latest writings can be found on the Matthew Yglesias blog.

Bad Omen?

By Matthew Yglesias
Feb 26 2008, 1:37 PM ET Comment

The Obama campaign sent out an email yesterday bragging about this, but I'm not so sure it's a good thing. Greg Oden says:

Like a lot of young people, I’ve been drawn to Senator Obama’s campaign and the potential he has for our country. Obama gives Americans, especially young voters like me, a sense of hope in politics. He makes us feel like we can come together for the good of our country. Topics like education, and healthcare are very important to me and I agree with Senator Obama's views on these issues.


For those of you who normally ignore my NBA posts, Oden was one of the most highly-touted draft picks ever. In part, this is because he graduated from high school as part of the very first class of high school graduates who weren't allowed to leap straight to the NBA. Thus the guy who, by acclamation, would have been the number one pick in the 2006 draft instead had to play a year in college granting us a second whole year of being treated to talk of what a phenomenal prospect he was. Then the Portland Trailblazers won the draft lottery, took Oden with the number one pick, and Oden promptly suffered a season-ending injury. So is Obama like the much-hyped prospect who wins up letting your team down? A disturbing thought. Oden is, however, prepared to vouch for Obama's ability to talk about basketball from day one:

The conversation was quick - like two minutes but I got to talk to him like a real person. What I got from talking to him is that he is a real sports fan and he knew about the Blazers. He said that when I come back Brandon, LaMarcus and I will be a force next year. He also asked me about my knee, and he said he wasn't feeling my mohawk - lol. I laughed and explained to him that it's just a haircut to me and he told me he liked how I handle myself as a young man - "Thanks Mom."


This seems astute. The West very, very tough but you have to think the Blazers are well-positioned for the future. All that said, at this point I feel like the campaign comes down to Texas, and it's really Kevin Durant's endorsement that one wants. Or LeBron James. And of course Obama's international mystique is reminiscent of the San Antonio Spurs. At the end of the day, the NBA -- full of rich young black men -- seems like endlessly promising territory for Obama endorsements.

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