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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (68356)	11/17/2008 4:12:22 PM
From: Sully-	2 Recommendations Respond to of 90947

Howard Kurtz Emerges From His Coma . . . Greg Pollowitz NRO's Media Blog . . . and finds the MSM's Obama-boosterism a tad unseemly: <<< Perhaps it was the announcement that NBC News is coming out with a DVD titled "Yes We Can: The Barack Obama Story." Or that ABC and USA Today are rushing out a book on the election. Or that HBO has snapped up a documentary on Obama's campaign. Perhaps it was the Newsweek commemorative issue — "Obama's American Dream" — filled with so many iconic images and such stirring prose that it could have been campaign literature. Or the Time cover depicting Obama as FDR, complete with jaunty cigarette holder. Are the media capable of merchandizing the moment, packaging a president-elect for profit? Yes, they are. What's troubling here goes beyond the clanging of cash registers. Media outlets have always tried to make a few bucks off the next big thing. The endless campaign is over, and there's nothing wrong with the country pulling together, however briefly, behind its new leader. But we seem to have crossed a cultural line into mythmaking. "The Obamas' New Life!" blares People's cover, with a shot of the family. "New home, new friends, new puppy!" Us Weekly goes with a Barack quote: "I Think I'm a Pretty Cool Dad." The Chicago Tribune trumpets that Michelle "is poised to be the new Oprah and the next Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis — combined!" for the fashion world. Whew! Are journalists fostering the notion that Obama is invincible, the leader of what the New York Times dubbed "Generation O"? Each writer, each publication, seems to reach for more eye-popping superlatives. "OBAMAISM — It's a Kind of Religion," says New York magazine. "Those of us too young to have known JFK's Camelot are going to have our own giddy Camelot II to enrapture and entertain us," Kurt Andersen writes. The New York Post has already christened it "BAM-A-LOT." >>> These are all fair points, but it's not like the MSM is acting all that differently today than they have been over the past year. media.nationalreview.com