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-Election 2012
A Fantasy Election, an Imaginary Man
2012-10-06
Long, long piece from City Journal, so just a teaser here. Better than your average screed.
Even before his inauguration, Barack Obama was an imaginary man, the creation of his admirers. Think back to the 2008 Time magazine cover depicting him as FDR, the Newsweek cover of the same year on which he was shown casting Lincoln's shadow, or the $1.4 million Nobel Peace Prize awarded to him "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples"--this in 2009, less than a year after he had taken office. It was not that Obama had done nothing to deserve these outsized comparisons and honors--it was not just that he had done nothing--it was that he seemed for all the world to be a blank screen on which such hysterical fantasies could too easily be projected, a two-dimensional paper doll just waiting to be dressed in leftist dreams.
Posted by:Beavis

#7  The mystery Obama—the hollow receptacle of out-sized fantasies left and right—is not a creation of his own making, political chameleon though he may well be. The mystery Obama... emanates instead from a journalistic communityÂ…

I slightly disagree. In order for O-Team’s “empty vessel” strategy to have been so successful a large portion of the ‘journalistic community’ wasn’t simply complicit – they’re in friggin cahoots.
Posted by: DepotGuy   2012-10-06 14:02  

#6  Perhaps by Election Day, the public will have awakened from the mediaÂ’s dream.
I'm not counting on it. Be nice if it happened.
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418   2012-10-06 12:12  

#5  To me, this is the money quote:

The mystery Obama... emanates instead from a journalistic community that no longer in any way fulfills its designated function, that no longer even attempts the fair presentation of facts and current events aimed at helping the American electorate make up its mind according to its own lights.... They have fallen prey to that ideological corruption that sees lies as a kind of virtue, as a noble deception in service to a greater good.

To be fair, this corruption existed back in the days of Cronkite, Huntley and Brinkley, and going on back a century or so (think 'Walter Duranty').
But to paraphrase Matt's comment: Cronkite, Huntley and Brinkley were giants compared to today's media personages.
Posted by: Pappy   2012-10-06 11:58  

#4  I've wondered since the first debate what would happen if Mitt Romney brought up the shocking status of Black Male unemployment, how it has cratered under BO.

I doubt that he would try but I figure the sound of BO's head, and those of his sychophants, exploding would register on seismographs everywhere.
Posted by: AlanC   2012-10-06 11:41  

#3  The historian James Thomas Flexner referred to George Washington as "The Indispensable Man", meaning that, as brilliant and determined as the other Founding Fathers were, their efforts to create America would have come to nought without the unique virtues of George Washington.

Looking at that little nebbish on stage the other night, you have to ask, "How exactly would we be worse off if Champ lost the election and retired to private life?" And the answer is, not at all. He brings nothing to the table except maybe the ability to do a good job of reading a speech; against which you have to offset the guy's pathological narcissism. He's a zero even by the standards of modern liberal politicians. Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, and LBJ were towering giants compared to this guy.
Posted by: Matt   2012-10-06 11:22  

#2  The media has been one large Fun House with distorted mirrors making the One to be a giant and Mitt the midget. It appears, once removed from that artificial play of imagery, a very surprised part of America rudely found out what 'beer goggles' means.
Posted by: Procopius2k   2012-10-06 10:24  

#1  Spot on!

ObamaÂ’s hapless fumbling, bad temper, and inarticulate inability to defend his record were actually thoroughly predictable. They were simply facets of the man as he truly is, unfiltered by the imagination of his media supporters: a man who has succeeded, really, at almost nothing but the winning of elections; a man who cannot distinguish between his ideology and life; a man who does not seem to know how the machinery of the world actually works.
Posted by: Besoeker   2012-10-06 09:55  

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