Navigate to News section

Sundown: Obama Gets the Picture

Plus dreidel for fame and fortune, mixed marriages, and more

by
Hadara Graubart
November 16, 2009

• During President Barack Obama’s term, the painting in the Oval Office’s private dining room has switched from a portrait of George Washington to a pastoral landscape to a Civil War-era painting of Abraham Lincoln and his generals called “The Peacemaker,” which graced the wall during Obama’s recent conference with Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu. Politico wonders: “Could the White House be trying to send a subliminal message to Netanyahu—or perhaps to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas?” [Politico]
• Journalists Cokie and Steve Roberts spoke to the Washington Post about their marriage in a video that’s part of the paper’s new project exploring interfaith relationships. According to Steve, his 90-year-old mother, who he describes as “a very Jewish woman,” nonetheless went to her first Passover seder at “her Catholic daughter-in-law’s.” [WPost]
• According to a New York Times profile, Twilight star Kristen Stewart did not have a conventional rise to fame: “An agent spotted her as an 8-year-old in a holiday show at her school in Woodland Hills, Calif. (She was singing ‘The Dreidel Song.’)” [NYT]
• Speaking of which, in a long-awaited development, there is now such a thing as Major League Dreidel. A blogger is skeptical: “Any major tournament that pays its winners in bags of chocolate gelt instead of straight money has a while to go.” [Eater]

Hadara Graubart was formerly a writer and editor for Tablet Magazine.