OBAMA AND THE PRESS….If you’ve been waiting for the inevitable press backlash against Barack Obama, this piece from Jake Tapper might be a harbinger:
Obama supporter Kathleen Geier writes that she’s “getting increasingly weirded out by some of Obama’s supporters….Describing various encounters with Obama supporters, she writes, “Excuse me, but this sounds more like a cult than a political campaign.”
….Joe Klein, writing at Time, notes “something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism” he sees in Obama’s Super Tuesday speech….The always interesting James Wolcott writes that “(p)erhaps it’s my atheism at work but I found myself increasingly wary of and resistant to the salvational fervor of the Obama campaign.”
When I wrote my Monday post about voting for Obama I got several jokey emails from friends lamenting that I’d finally joined the cult (“Now you’ll have to buy a Mac and start blogging about The Wire….”). And it’s undeniable that there really is a movement fervor surrounding the Obama campaign — something that even the press has gotten caught up in. Eventually, however, especially among jaded reporters who are (a) looking for a new angle and (b) a little more aware than most that Obama’s actual political career has been good but not world-changing, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a few more stories along this line.
Not saying it’s fair. Just saying that it’s out there and might get a little more attention now that it’s obvious we have a few more months to go in this race. Newton’s Third Law isn’t just about physics, after all.
