The 'Cult' of Obama?

Our wide-eyed media doesn't seem to know what to make of the phenomenon known as the Obama campaign, some going as far as to liken it to a cult. Let me lace-up some Nikes, stir up a pitcher of KoolAid and delve into the laziness known as reporting for the 2008 presidential campaign.

Media Matters (aka Evil Soros-funded Clinton hackery factory) has noticed a recent trend by some in the media to explain away Obama's popularity. It seems to me that it's sure alot easier work-wise to explain 20K+ crowds and record-busting fund raising by inferring that those involved are somehow in the grips of a religious frenzy without a rational thought in their heads. What ever else could it be? The answer to that question on the part of our cynical, cloistered media would require research, cognitive thinking and the ability to remove their lips from the insider Washington culture that has fed them so well lately. You know - journalism.

Let's start with the definition of a cult (from Merriam-Webster online):

Main Entry: cult
Function: noun
Usage: often attributive
Etymology: French & Latin; French culte, from Latin cultus care, adoration, from colere to cultivate - more at wheel
Date: 1617
1: formal religious veneration : worship
2: a system of religious beliefs and ritual; also : its body of adherents
3: a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious; also : its body of adherents
4: a system for the cure of disease based on dogma set forth by its promulgator <health cults>
5 a: great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work (as a film or book); especially : such devotion regarded as a literary or intellectual fad b: the object of such devotion c: a usually small group of people characterized by such devotion

Now if you want to get technical, definition #5 would work for Obamamania, but I don't think that's what these writers/talkers had in mind here:

(CNN) Contributor Carol Costello said that audience response at an Obama rally is "a scene some increasingly find not inspirational, but 'creepy' " and then cited columns by Los Angeles Times columnist Joel Stein, conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks, and Time columnist Joe Klein, all of whom likened Obama supporters to members of a cult or described their enthusiasm as "creepy." On-screen text during Costello's report read: "OBAMA-MANIA BACKLASH" and "PASSION 'CULT-LIKE' TO SOME."

Or this from ABC's Jake Tapper:

And Obama Wept

Inspiration is nice. But some folks seem to be getting out of hand.

It's as if Tom Daschle descended from on high saying, "Be not afraid; for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all the people: for there is born to you this day in the city of Chicago a Savior, who is Barack the Democrat."

[...]

And behold, Obama met them and greeted them. And they came up and took hold of His feet and worshiped Him.

The Holy Season of Lent is upon us. Can Obama worshippers try to give up their Helter-Skelter cult-ish qualities for a few weeks?

At least until Easter, or the Pennsylvania primary, whichever comes first...

And a lovely wrap-up from The WaPo's Charles Krauthammer:

ABC's Jake Tapper notes the "Helter-Skelter cult-ish qualities" of "Obama worshipers," what Joel Stein of the Los Angeles Times calls "the Cult of Obama." Obama's Super Tuesday victory speech was a classic of the genre. Its effect was electric, eliciting a rhythmic fervor in the audience -- to such rhetorical nonsense as "We are the ones we've been waiting for. (Cheers, applause.) We are the change that we seek."

That was too much for Time's Joe Klein. "There was something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism," he wrote. "The message is becoming dangerously self-referential. The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is."

You might dismiss as hyperbole the complaint by the New York Times's Paul Krugman that "the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality." Until you hear Chris Matthews, who no longer has the excuse of youth, react to Obama's Potomac primary victory speech with "My, I felt this thrill going up my leg." When his MSNBC co-hosts tried to bail him out, he refused to recant. Not surprising for an acolyte who said that Obama "comes along, and he seems to have the answers. This is the New Testament."

Now if you see a pattern then good for you. CNN quotes Joe Klein, Joel Stein and David Brooks. Jake Tapper quotes Klein and Paul Krugman, Krauthammer quotes Tapper, Klein, Stein and Krugman. There's clearly something circularly masturbatory about it. And not an original thought in the process.

These would be the same media types that regularly castigated the "wooden and boring" Gore (2000) and Kerry (2004), preferring instead to pull for the verbally challenged, insipid George Bush. Obviously none remember the throngs of people of all shapes, colors and sizes that followed RFK before his death.

I don't recall reading much in the MSM about the cult of Reagan that we saw early in this election cycle - 2 debates at the Reagan library and his holy visage and name bandied about in respectful whispers with all the candidates promising to be just like His Ronniness. Nearer my Ron to Thee.

We'll expect to see this type of media laziness and cynicism each time our Fourth Estate bumps up against something they haven't seen before. I have long since given up hoping that this group will learn how to write their way out of a paper bag anytime soon.