'Hi, my name is the Media, and I'm an Obamaholic'

Gerard Baker of The Times writes about the Obama obsession and the bizarre need of the mainstream media to canonise a new political candidate every decade (so long they are a Democrat, of course).

It's one of the best articles I've read in a while. He describes the media as being ready to "indulge in one of the greatest, orgiastic media fiestas of hero-worship since Elvis Presley."

Referring to Newsweek's story "The O Team":

This rhapsodic inside account of Senator Obama's campaign reads a little like a cross between Father Alban Butler's Life of St Francis and the sort of authorised biography of Kim Jong Il you can pick up in any good bookshop in Pyongyang.

Mr Obama is portrayed throughout as an immanently benevolent figure. Not human really, more a comforting presence, a light source. He is always eager to listen to all aides of an argument, always instilling confidence in the weak-willed, resolutely sticking to his high principles and tirelessly spurning the low road of electoral politics. I stopped reading after a while but I'm sure by the end he was healing the sick, comforting the dying, restoring sight to the blind and setting prisoners free.

He goes on to talk about how it now seems conventional wisdom in the press that the only way Republicans have won anything in the last 40 years is through lies and fearmongering. He also points out that McCain, previously a "favourite because he conformed to the first law of contemporary political journalism: the only good conservative is a bad conservative", is now being portrayed as "villain and scaremonger-in-chief" to prevent him from "asking reasonable questions about Mr Obama's strikingly vacuous political background".

It's ridiculous, since when was it the media's job to act as a protective shell for a political candidate? Last night I tried to think of things that would make the MSM turn on him. Even now, with all the issues (even the latest 'sweetie' remark), the increasing frequency of bad staff work, the sheer number of unsavoury associations, you'd think they'd already be inching back ever so slightly, but they're not. CNN and Sky News (and obviously the BBC) were selling the Bush speech as him directly attacking Obama during a foreign celebration.

As Baker concludes:

If the past 40 years have taught us anything they have surely taught that premature canonisation is an almost certain guarantee of subsequent deep disappointment.

I'm just afraid that by the time the media wakes up and smells the mediocrity, we'll have a nuclear Iran and a smoldering Israel.