Letters to the Editor

Illustrative New Hampshire snippets The decisions of New Hampshire voters are not yet known. One can't say the same for the journalists covering the election. Glenn Greenwald [2008-01-08]

• Obamaglurge?

  This burgeoning Obamamania coverage sends shivers down my spine.

  I'm just spitballin' here, and I bring the bias of deep cynicism and disaffection for the painfully grotesque state of US political life. So maybe it's not you, it's me.

  I suppose it's not widely understood that mass euphoria generated by public figures is by and large a manifestation of mass hysteria. Although the Iowa caucuses have been innocuously categorized as merely the "first words" in a year-long discussion, the hyper-lionization of Obama gave his campaign such a boost that he's taking New Hampshire like Bernadette took Lourdes. The "conversation" may not stop, but the subjects certainly narrow.

  Perhaps the Voice of Barack is indeed so resonant with silver truth and golden purpose, so luminous with virtue and roaring with courage, that it melts the hardened heart and steels the bent spine. My iconoclastic ears are tone-deaf to such appeals. So naturally, he sounds like just another virtuoso Bullshitter to me-- a patronizing, condescending centrist who will protect and ally with vested interests beneath the patter of transcendental rhetoric.

  But I digress. Apart from my own inconsequential, and perhaps aberrant, perceptions-- I worry that the corporate media is already projecting upon Obama the promise of another Morning in America. By which I meantersay, dusting off that myth, that mummer's regalia, and fitting it to Obama. Never mind the superficial differences, e.g. party affiliation and philosophies-- the Hero-Candidate, the Savior-Candidate, need only be a Great Communicator who inspires trust and affection, who makes people feel encouraged and optimistic, and of course feel good about the "direction" of our country again.

  Any "mania" phenomenon is eagerly embraced by the corporate media, because the melodrama and overwrought emotion is like helium that pumps up the coverage until it becomes a self-propelled, self-confirming, and self-expanding juggernaut. Obamamania is particularly propitious because it allows the media to shed the clinging shreds of their quondam Bush-worship and transfer their symbiotic sycophancy to a fresh, wholesome, attractive unknown quantity of a host.

  I hope I'm wrong, that the Obama buzz is peaking and will fade to a more... normative level. But Common Dreams and even that trash-tabloid Huffington Post are already brimming with tributes to Obama, the Rising Star.

  I harbor the disquieting suspicion that in general, citizens including even media and political elites, are so heartsick and weary from the evil, toxic depredations of the Bush Crime family and its agents, that they are desperate for a reason to feel good. And the wonderfulness of Obama will be wondrously shared by wonderful coverage in a wonderful renaissance of ecstasy.

  Obama is a self-conscious messianic figure who is running a messianic campaign. If the media chooses to reciprocate, even a moon suit won't keep one from perishing in a deluge of infotainwhore-generated Obamaglurge.

  I expect there are those who feel that the end justifies the means, that it isn't so terrible if Obama is lofted into the Oval Office in a burst of corporate media flubber and a constituency on a contact high. I feel otherwise, but I can't get the hang of apres-Enlightenment thinking.

  -- Little Brother
  [Read Little Brother's other letters]
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