Miranda Devine
November 27, 2008
The Sydney Morning Herald - As the Czech President, Vaclav Klaus, an economist, anti-totalitarian and climate change sceptic, prepares to take up the rotating presidency of the European Union next year, climate alarmists are doing their best to traduce him.
The New York Times opened a profile of Klaus, 67, this week with a quote from a 1980s communist secret agent's report, claiming he behaves like a "rejected genius", and asserts there is "palpable fear" he will "embarrass" the EU.
But the real fear driving climate alarmists wild is that a more rational approach to the fundamentalist religion of global warming may be in the ascendancy - whether in the parliamentary offices of the world's largest trading bloc or in the living rooms of Blacktown.
As the global financial crisis takes hold, perhaps people are starting to wonder whether the so-called precautionary principle, which would have us accept enormous new taxes in the guise of an emissions trading scheme and curtail economic growth, is justified, based on what we actually know about climate.
One of Australia's leading enviro-sceptics, the geologist and University of Adelaide professor Ian Plimer, 62, says he has noticed audiences becoming more receptive to his message that climate change has always occurred and there is nothing we can do to stop it.
In a speech at the American Club in Sydney on Monday night for Quadrant magazine, titled Human-Induced Climate Change - A Lot Of Hot Air, Plimer debunked climate-change myths.
"Climates always change," he said. Our climate has changed in cycles over millions of years, as the orbit of the planet wobbles and our distance from the sun changes, for instance, or as the sun itself produces variable amounts of radiation. "All of this affects climate. It is impossible to stop climate change. Climates have always changed and they always will."
His two-hour presentation included more than 50 charts and graphs, as well as almost 40 pages of references. It is the basis of his new book, Heaven And Earth: The Missing Science Of Global Warming, to be published early next year.
Plimer said one of the charts, which plots atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperature over 500 million years, with seemingly little correlation, demonstrates one of the "lessons from history" to which geologists are privy: "There is no relationship between CO2 and temperature."
Another slide charts the alternating periods of cooling and warming on Earth, with the Pleistocene Ice Age starting 110,000 years ago and giving way, 14,700 years ago, to the Bolling warm period for 800 years. This in turn gave way to the Older Dryas cooling for 300 years, then the Allerod warming for 700 years, and so on, until the cooling of the Little Ice Age from 1300 to 1850. Since 1850, we have lived through the "Modern Warming", one of the most stable climate periods in history.
Plimer said some astronomers predict we are headed for a new cooling period.
Plimer said there is a division between those scientists who sit in front of super computers and push piles of data into the mathematical models that drive the theory of climate change, and those who take measurements in the field.
We are not sceptical enough about the data. For instance, Plimer cited differences between results from temperature measuring stations in urban and rural areas. Those in urbanised Chicago, Berkeley, New York, and so on, show temperature rises over the past 150 years, whereas those in the rural US, in Houlton, Albany and Harrisburg (though not Death Valley, California) show equally consistent cooling. "What we're measuring is urbanisation," Plimer said.
To understand the chaotic nature of climate change, we need to consider all the inputs - cosmic radiation, sun, clouds and so on, he said.
There was much more but essentially Plimer's message is that the idea humans cause climate change has become a fundamentalist religion which is corrupting science. It is embedded with a fear of nature and embraced principally by city people who have lost touch with nature.
He likens the debate to the famous 1990s battle he had in the Federal Court, where he accused an elder of The Hills Bible Church in Baulkham Hills of breaching Australia's Trade Practices Act by claiming to have found scientific evidence of Noah's Ark in Turkey.
Plimer says creationists and climate alarmists are quite similar in that "we're dealing with dogma and people who, when challenged, become quite vicious and irrational".
Human-caused climate change is being "promoted with religious zeal … there are fundamentalist organisations which will do anything to silence critics. They have their holy books, their prophet [is] Al Gore. And they are promoting a story which is frightening us witless [using] guilt [and urging] penance."
It is difficult for non-scientists to engage in the debate over what causes climate change and whether or not it can be stopped by new taxes and slower growth, because dissenting voices are shouted down by true believers in the scientific community who claim they alone have the authority to speak.
Quadrant is under fire for publishing articles by sceptics but, as its editor, Keith Windschuttle, said on Monday night, "People who are really confident [of their facts] relish debate."
In any case, ordinary people already have suspicions. The zealotry and one-sidedness of the debate alarmed an 81-year-old Seven Hills pensioner, Denys Clarke, so much that last month, at his own expense, he hired the ballroom at the Blacktown Workers Club for two public forums, titled The Truth About Climate Change. He invited a climate sceptic, the James Cook University professor Bob Carter, a geologist, to speak. More than 300 people attended, some from as far away as Nowra.
Carter, like Plimer and Klaus, has come in for his fair share of vilification. But as Clarke proves, you can't stop people thinking. Yet.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Thursday, November 27, 2008
US Media Election Absurdity 9
The death of objectivity
October 24, 2008
Colorado Springs Gazette - Regardless of who wins the presidential election, one outcome of the 2008 campaign is decided. This will go down in history as the year the mainstream media came clean, throwing all pretense of objectivity and fairness out the door to indulge a no-holds-barred mission to elect the Democratic ticket. The Fourth Estate will never be the same. It's not a bad thing, because Americans have a more honest relationship with the media than they have ever enjoyed.
The vast majority of reporters and editors at the big three networks, the wire services and the nation's major newspapers and magazines have historically been liberal Democrats proclaiming objectivity while providing biased coverage. That's one reason right wingers do so well on A.M. radio. It's a niche born of blowback against the establishment press.
It's the last refuge of Joe the Plumber, whose radio plays while he solders pipe.
Journalism faculties at major universities are overwhelmingly and radically liberal. It's the nature of the beast. The liberal Democratic politics of taxing, spending and redistribution are interpreted as populist policies that will give comfort and aid to people who have the least. That makes liberalism the obvious refuge for journalists who embark upon their careers to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
A famous 2004 report by the Media Research Center summarized media bias just four years before the façade came down: "Surveys over the past 25 years have consistently found journalists are much more liberal than the rest of America. Their voting habits are disproportionately Democratic, their views on issues such as abortion and gay rights are well to the left of most Americans and they are less likely to attend church or synagogue.
When it comes to the free market, journalists have become increasingly pro-regulation over the past 20 years, with majorities endorsing activist government efforts to guarantee everyone a job and to reduce the income gap between rich and poor Americans." (They should love Obama, who says he'll take from the rich and give to the poor).
Way back in 1986, when there was an effort at balance in the nation's leading news rooms, three leading political scientists surveyed 240 journalists at ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report. In no election they asked about did the percentage of journalists voting Democrat ever dip below 80 percent.
Historically, however, the liberal Democrats who staff major media organizations have made concerted efforts to at least feign objectivity. Not anymore. By mid-August, Obama had graced the cover of Time, the country's premiere weekly news magazine, seven times in one year! John McCain had been featured twice. Newsweek gave Obama the cover for the 10th time in mid-August, but suffice to say he's on the cover of Newsweek and other major slicks pretty much every week these days. Newsweek editors have rendered their once-great magazine a national laughing stock. Newsweek's Obama covers are reportedly tweaked to make the candidate look flawless. One Obama cover features a white light shining down on his head, creating the image of a halo around his hairline. An unflattering cover of Sarah Palin, by contrast, features every wrinkle and every flaw, and the headline: "She's one of the folks, and that's the problem."
The Media Research Center reported Oct. 2 that ABC's "Good Morning America" skipped reporting the results of its own poll, which showed at the time a tight race between Obama and McCain in Florida and Ohio. Instead, it reported a Quinnipiac poll that showed far more favorable results for Obama.
The mainstream media have rightly given scant attention to silly GOP-driven scandals, like the one that portrays Obama as the bosom buddy of some loser who tried to terrorize his own country when Obama was 8. Journalists have taken the high road with that story, preferring to focus on more substantive policy issues. Yet mainstream journalists burned substantial print space and air time this week alerting us that donors spent $150,000 to outfit Palin for the campaign - the biggest "who cares?" ever told in a national campaign.
In one classic last-minute effort to ensure an Obama landslide, CNN's Drew Griffin used an interview with Palin to fully distort the text of a National Review article written to expose media bias. National Review's Brian York wrote: "Watching press coverage of the Republican candidate for vice president, it's sometimes hard to decide whether Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt, backward, or - or, well, all of the above."
Clearly, he was criticizing the press. But York's words were parroted back to Palin as an example of criticism she's receiving even from conservatives. He asked Palin to answer to the fact a National Review writer had penned: "I can't tell if Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt or all of the above." He reversed the message of a tiny niche magazine in order to fool an enormous, mainstream TV audience into believing that even conservatives think Palin is awful.
The anecdotal evidence of bold, overt and unapologetic mainstream media bias seems endless. That's why a Pew Research Center poll released Oct. 22 showed that by a whopping 70 percent margin Americans say "most journalists want to see Obama, not John McCain, win on Nov. 4." Only 9 percent think the media favor McCain. Rarely has an opinion poll about anything shown such overwhelming and decisive results.
The pretense of objectivity, long a part of our country's Fourth Estate, has been sacrificed at the altar of Obama. A majority of mainstream journalists have given up on the illusion of objectivity. They want the Democrats to win, they don't have the time or energy for fairness, and they'll give their professional lives for the cause if necessary. And that's OK. The genie has emerged from the bottle and she's never going back. At least Americans see her and know her better than ever.
*Courtesy of the Colorado Springs Gazette, OPINION column, dated Sunday, October 26, 2008
October 24, 2008
Colorado Springs Gazette - Regardless of who wins the presidential election, one outcome of the 2008 campaign is decided. This will go down in history as the year the mainstream media came clean, throwing all pretense of objectivity and fairness out the door to indulge a no-holds-barred mission to elect the Democratic ticket. The Fourth Estate will never be the same. It's not a bad thing, because Americans have a more honest relationship with the media than they have ever enjoyed.
The vast majority of reporters and editors at the big three networks, the wire services and the nation's major newspapers and magazines have historically been liberal Democrats proclaiming objectivity while providing biased coverage. That's one reason right wingers do so well on A.M. radio. It's a niche born of blowback against the establishment press.
It's the last refuge of Joe the Plumber, whose radio plays while he solders pipe.
Journalism faculties at major universities are overwhelmingly and radically liberal. It's the nature of the beast. The liberal Democratic politics of taxing, spending and redistribution are interpreted as populist policies that will give comfort and aid to people who have the least. That makes liberalism the obvious refuge for journalists who embark upon their careers to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
A famous 2004 report by the Media Research Center summarized media bias just four years before the façade came down: "Surveys over the past 25 years have consistently found journalists are much more liberal than the rest of America. Their voting habits are disproportionately Democratic, their views on issues such as abortion and gay rights are well to the left of most Americans and they are less likely to attend church or synagogue.
When it comes to the free market, journalists have become increasingly pro-regulation over the past 20 years, with majorities endorsing activist government efforts to guarantee everyone a job and to reduce the income gap between rich and poor Americans." (They should love Obama, who says he'll take from the rich and give to the poor).
Way back in 1986, when there was an effort at balance in the nation's leading news rooms, three leading political scientists surveyed 240 journalists at ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report. In no election they asked about did the percentage of journalists voting Democrat ever dip below 80 percent.
Historically, however, the liberal Democrats who staff major media organizations have made concerted efforts to at least feign objectivity. Not anymore. By mid-August, Obama had graced the cover of Time, the country's premiere weekly news magazine, seven times in one year! John McCain had been featured twice. Newsweek gave Obama the cover for the 10th time in mid-August, but suffice to say he's on the cover of Newsweek and other major slicks pretty much every week these days. Newsweek editors have rendered their once-great magazine a national laughing stock. Newsweek's Obama covers are reportedly tweaked to make the candidate look flawless. One Obama cover features a white light shining down on his head, creating the image of a halo around his hairline. An unflattering cover of Sarah Palin, by contrast, features every wrinkle and every flaw, and the headline: "She's one of the folks, and that's the problem."
The Media Research Center reported Oct. 2 that ABC's "Good Morning America" skipped reporting the results of its own poll, which showed at the time a tight race between Obama and McCain in Florida and Ohio. Instead, it reported a Quinnipiac poll that showed far more favorable results for Obama.
The mainstream media have rightly given scant attention to silly GOP-driven scandals, like the one that portrays Obama as the bosom buddy of some loser who tried to terrorize his own country when Obama was 8. Journalists have taken the high road with that story, preferring to focus on more substantive policy issues. Yet mainstream journalists burned substantial print space and air time this week alerting us that donors spent $150,000 to outfit Palin for the campaign - the biggest "who cares?" ever told in a national campaign.
In one classic last-minute effort to ensure an Obama landslide, CNN's Drew Griffin used an interview with Palin to fully distort the text of a National Review article written to expose media bias. National Review's Brian York wrote: "Watching press coverage of the Republican candidate for vice president, it's sometimes hard to decide whether Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt, backward, or - or, well, all of the above."
Clearly, he was criticizing the press. But York's words were parroted back to Palin as an example of criticism she's receiving even from conservatives. He asked Palin to answer to the fact a National Review writer had penned: "I can't tell if Sarah Palin is incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt or all of the above." He reversed the message of a tiny niche magazine in order to fool an enormous, mainstream TV audience into believing that even conservatives think Palin is awful.
The anecdotal evidence of bold, overt and unapologetic mainstream media bias seems endless. That's why a Pew Research Center poll released Oct. 22 showed that by a whopping 70 percent margin Americans say "most journalists want to see Obama, not John McCain, win on Nov. 4." Only 9 percent think the media favor McCain. Rarely has an opinion poll about anything shown such overwhelming and decisive results.
The pretense of objectivity, long a part of our country's Fourth Estate, has been sacrificed at the altar of Obama. A majority of mainstream journalists have given up on the illusion of objectivity. They want the Democrats to win, they don't have the time or energy for fairness, and they'll give their professional lives for the cause if necessary. And that's OK. The genie has emerged from the bottle and she's never going back. At least Americans see her and know her better than ever.
*Courtesy of the Colorado Springs Gazette, OPINION column, dated Sunday, October 26, 2008
Monday, November 17, 2008
US Media Election Absurdity 8
A Giddy Sense of Boosterism
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 17, 2008; C01
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."
"Here we are," writes Salon's Rebecca Traister, "oohing and aahing over what they'll be wearing, and what they'll be eating, what kind of dog they'll be getting, what bedrooms they'll be living in, and what schools they'll be attending. It feels better than good to sniff and snurfle through the Obamas' tastes and habits. . . . Who knew we had in us the capacity to fall for this kind of idealized Americana again?"
But aren't media people supposed to resist this kind of hyperventilating?
"Obama is a figure, especially in pop culture, in a way that most new presidents are not," historian Michael Beschloss says. "Young people who may not be interested in the details of NAFTA or foreign policy just think Obama is cool, and they're interested in him. Being cool can really help a new president."
So can a sense of optimism, reflected on USA Today's front page. "Poll: Hopes soaring for Obama, administration," the headline said, with 65 percent saying "the USA will be better off 4 years from now."
But what happens when adulation gives way to the messy, incremental process of governing? When Obama has to confront a deep-rooted financial crisis, two wars and a political system whose default setting is gridlock? When he makes decisions that inevitably disappoint some of his boosters?
"We're celebrating a moment as much as a man, I think," says Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham, whose new issue, out today, compares Obama to Lincoln. "Given our racial history, an hour or two of commemoration seems appropriate. But there is no doubt that the glow of the moment will fade, and I am sure the coverage will reflect that in due course."
One of the few magazines to strike a skeptical tone is the London-based Economist, which endorsed Obama. "With such a victory come unreasonably great expectations," its lead editorial says.
Web worship of Obama is nearly limitless. On YouTube alone, the Obama Girl song, "I've Got a Crush on Obama," has been viewed 11.7 million times. Even an unadorned video of the candidate's election night speech in Chicago has drawn 3.5 million views.
I am not trying to diminish the sheer improbability of what this African American politician, a virtual unknown four years ago, has accomplished. Every one of us views his victory through a personal lens. I thought of growing up in a "Leave It to Beaver" era, when there were no blacks in leading television roles until Bill Cosby was tapped as the co-star of "I Spy" in 1965. When the Watts riots broke out that year, the Los Angeles Times sent an advertising salesman to cover it because the paper had no black reporters. The country has traveled light-years since then.
It is hard to find a precedent in American history. Ronald Reagan was a marquee star because of his Hollywood career, but mainly among older voters, since he made his last movie 16 years before winning the White House in 1980. Jack Kennedy was a more formal figure after winning the 1960 election -- "trying to look older than he was, because he thought youth was a handicap in running for president," Beschloss says -- but quickly took on larger-than-life dimensions.
"The Kennedy buildup goes on," James MacGregor Burns wrote in the New Republic in the spring of 1961. "The adjectives tumble over one another. He is not only the handsomest, the best-dressed, the most articulate, and graceful as a gazelle. He is omniscient; he swallows and digests whole books in minutes; he confounds experts with his superior knowledge of their field. He is omnipotent."
Soon afterward, Kennedy blundered into the Bay of Pigs debacle.
The media would be remiss if they didn't reflect the sense of unadulterated joy that greeted Obama's election, both here and around the world, and the pride even among those who opposed him. Newspapers were stunned and delighted at the voracious demand for post-election editions, prompting The Washington Post and other papers to print hundreds of thousands of extra copies and pocket the change. (When else have we felt so loved lately?) Demand for inaugural tickets has been unprecedented. Barack is suddenly a hot baby name. Record companies are releasing hip-hop songs, by the likes of Jay-Z and Will.I.Am, with such titles as "Pop Champagne for Barack." Consumers, the Los Angeles Times reports, are buying up "Obama-themed T-shirts, buttons, bobblehead dolls, coffee mugs, wine bottles, magnets, greeting cards, neon signs, mobile phones and framed art prints."
A barrage of Obama-related books are in the works. Newsweek's quadrennial election volume is titled "A Long Time Coming: The Historic, Combative, Expensive and Inspiring 2008 Election and the Victory of Barack Obama." Publishers obviously see a bull market.
MSNBC, which was accused of cheerleading for the Democratic nominee during the campaign, is running promos that say: "Barack Obama, America's 44th president. Watch as a leader renews America's promise." What are viewers to make of that?
There is always a level of excitement when a new president is coming to town -- new aides to profile, new policies to dissect, new family members to follow. But can anyone imagine this kind of media frenzy if John McCain had managed to win?
Obama's days of walking on water won't last indefinitely. His chroniclers will need a new story line. And sometime after Jan. 20, they will wade back into reality.
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 17, 2008; C01
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."
"Here we are," writes Salon's Rebecca Traister, "oohing and aahing over what they'll be wearing, and what they'll be eating, what kind of dog they'll be getting, what bedrooms they'll be living in, and what schools they'll be attending. It feels better than good to sniff and snurfle through the Obamas' tastes and habits. . . . Who knew we had in us the capacity to fall for this kind of idealized Americana again?"
But aren't media people supposed to resist this kind of hyperventilating?
"Obama is a figure, especially in pop culture, in a way that most new presidents are not," historian Michael Beschloss says. "Young people who may not be interested in the details of NAFTA or foreign policy just think Obama is cool, and they're interested in him. Being cool can really help a new president."
So can a sense of optimism, reflected on USA Today's front page. "Poll: Hopes soaring for Obama, administration," the headline said, with 65 percent saying "the USA will be better off 4 years from now."
But what happens when adulation gives way to the messy, incremental process of governing? When Obama has to confront a deep-rooted financial crisis, two wars and a political system whose default setting is gridlock? When he makes decisions that inevitably disappoint some of his boosters?
"We're celebrating a moment as much as a man, I think," says Newsweek Editor Jon Meacham, whose new issue, out today, compares Obama to Lincoln. "Given our racial history, an hour or two of commemoration seems appropriate. But there is no doubt that the glow of the moment will fade, and I am sure the coverage will reflect that in due course."
One of the few magazines to strike a skeptical tone is the London-based Economist, which endorsed Obama. "With such a victory come unreasonably great expectations," its lead editorial says.
Web worship of Obama is nearly limitless. On YouTube alone, the Obama Girl song, "I've Got a Crush on Obama," has been viewed 11.7 million times. Even an unadorned video of the candidate's election night speech in Chicago has drawn 3.5 million views.
I am not trying to diminish the sheer improbability of what this African American politician, a virtual unknown four years ago, has accomplished. Every one of us views his victory through a personal lens. I thought of growing up in a "Leave It to Beaver" era, when there were no blacks in leading television roles until Bill Cosby was tapped as the co-star of "I Spy" in 1965. When the Watts riots broke out that year, the Los Angeles Times sent an advertising salesman to cover it because the paper had no black reporters. The country has traveled light-years since then.
It is hard to find a precedent in American history. Ronald Reagan was a marquee star because of his Hollywood career, but mainly among older voters, since he made his last movie 16 years before winning the White House in 1980. Jack Kennedy was a more formal figure after winning the 1960 election -- "trying to look older than he was, because he thought youth was a handicap in running for president," Beschloss says -- but quickly took on larger-than-life dimensions.
"The Kennedy buildup goes on," James MacGregor Burns wrote in the New Republic in the spring of 1961. "The adjectives tumble over one another. He is not only the handsomest, the best-dressed, the most articulate, and graceful as a gazelle. He is omniscient; he swallows and digests whole books in minutes; he confounds experts with his superior knowledge of their field. He is omnipotent."
Soon afterward, Kennedy blundered into the Bay of Pigs debacle.
The media would be remiss if they didn't reflect the sense of unadulterated joy that greeted Obama's election, both here and around the world, and the pride even among those who opposed him. Newspapers were stunned and delighted at the voracious demand for post-election editions, prompting The Washington Post and other papers to print hundreds of thousands of extra copies and pocket the change. (When else have we felt so loved lately?) Demand for inaugural tickets has been unprecedented. Barack is suddenly a hot baby name. Record companies are releasing hip-hop songs, by the likes of Jay-Z and Will.I.Am, with such titles as "Pop Champagne for Barack." Consumers, the Los Angeles Times reports, are buying up "Obama-themed T-shirts, buttons, bobblehead dolls, coffee mugs, wine bottles, magnets, greeting cards, neon signs, mobile phones and framed art prints."
A barrage of Obama-related books are in the works. Newsweek's quadrennial election volume is titled "A Long Time Coming: The Historic, Combative, Expensive and Inspiring 2008 Election and the Victory of Barack Obama." Publishers obviously see a bull market.
MSNBC, which was accused of cheerleading for the Democratic nominee during the campaign, is running promos that say: "Barack Obama, America's 44th president. Watch as a leader renews America's promise." What are viewers to make of that?
There is always a level of excitement when a new president is coming to town -- new aides to profile, new policies to dissect, new family members to follow. But can anyone imagine this kind of media frenzy if John McCain had managed to win?
Obama's days of walking on water won't last indefinitely. His chroniclers will need a new story line. And sometime after Jan. 20, they will wade back into reality.
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