Home resistobama Obama's Omnipresent Cult of Personality
Home resistobama Obama's Omnipresent Cult of Personality

Obama's Omnipresent Cult of Personality

While many have commented on the media's bias leading up to the election, what we are beginning to see now trumps anything that has come before. We are no longer talking about media bias, but media worship.

The media's approach to Obama does not resemble their approach to any living President, but its parallels can only be found in the Russian press' approach to Putin or the Iraqi press' approach to Saddam Hussein. It's not bias, it's a cult of personality.

Key to this cult of personality is the omnipresence of Obama. In totalitarian states, the dictator is everywhere. His life is always front and center, his recreation and hobbies are major news items, his day to day existence is meant to be the focus of your life.

It is an ominous development in a Democratic country, but not an unexpected one. The goal of this constant coverage is to deepen the one way emotional bond the "people" experience with Obama. Like a deity, the cult of personality is meant to create the sense that the Beloved Leader's life is deeply connected to yours.

The coverage involved is often trivial. Take for example, Putin's karate, his hunting, stories on how many women admire him or his skiing prowess. On the surface it seems innocuous, until you realize that it creates a cult figure who is somehow omnipresent. The dictator as celebrity is a cultural Moloch figure, meant only to be worshiped and adored.

It is the very triviality of the coverage that characterizes a cult of personality. Obama coverage is not simply filed under politics. It is everywhere. In the sports section, under music, under everything.

On the Yahoo front page we learn that there are nano sized images of Obama now being created.

At the University of Michigan, professor John Hart has used nanotechnology to create images of Barack Obama, the next president of the United States. Each Obama face is made up of 150 million vertically-aligned carbon nanotubes grown at really high temperatures and imaged with a scanning electron microscope.


In another article we learn about a massive beach sculpture of Obama. He truly is everywhere, great and small. Kim Jong Il can only look on in envy.

In the sports section of the New York Times, there is a scouting report for Obama on athletic heads of state, decorated with a photo of Obama playing basketball. Putin's athleticism naturally is highlighted in the article. The multimedia photo edition begins with Castro. Naturally.

Meanwhile the Arts section of the Chicago Tribune wonders whether Obama will restore Jazz to the White House.

The TriCities editor apologizes because the newspaper's Obama victory edition had too small a photo of Obama.
Unfortunately, we don’t get a second chance to put out a Nov. 5, 2008, front page. And while we wanted that one – a keepsake that documented Barack Obama’s historic presidential win – to be a masterpiece, we fell short in the estimation of several readers, despite our best intentions.The criticism: The Obama photo was too small.
The blame is mine to shoulder because it was my job to ensure our front page conveyed the heft associated with such a monumental event in U.S. history.

You expect to read things like this in Soviet papers, editors apologizing and admitting blame for insufficiently groveling to the Beloved Leader,  but what's old is new again. And Democracy and the Democratic tradition of leaders we question, rather than kneel before, is out as well.

Headlines everywhere compare him to Lincoln and Kennedy and FDR. Another headline asks, "Where Were You When Obama Was Elected?" A third headline, "Historians, Too, Call Obama Victory “Monumental”. 
A fourth headline, From congressmen to coeds, positive reactions to Obama. A fifth headline, "Confessions of a McCain Voter". Can the reeducation camps be far behind?

This is not political coverage, it is not even political bootlicking, but hysterical adoration. A true cult of personality for a man who has accomplished nothing to merit any of it. But then tyrants never do, that is why they need a cult of personality in the first place.

Men of accomplishment don't need hysterical followers, mass adoration and media managed worship. It is the human failures and the corrupt, who know exactly how little they're worth, who require it. The Stalins, the Hitlers, the Kim Jong Ils. Their secret fear is of discovery and exposure, that the mask will be ripped away and the little boy will cry, "The Emperor is Naked".

And so the cult of personality is born to cover up for the inadequacies of the sociopathic fraud who knows his own worthlessness and requires mass adoration to conceal it. But to the men and women who can see all that the cult of personality affirms is that the emperor is indeed naked.

Comments

  1. Poor poor Barry. He must have a deep-rooted neurosis and inferiority complex which developed during childhood.

    He watched Romper Room and when the teacher at the end of the show looked into her magic mirror to recite the names of the kids she saw (ex. I see Johnny and Joey and Sarah and Mitt and Rudy) never saw anyone named Barack.

    Now he wants his name and image everywhere. He's gone above and beyond name and face recognition with voters.


    The media, lacking anything of substance to write about him, resorts to "charticles."

    (combination of article and chart. Brief. Little substance. Post literate but it keeps his name and face all over the place. Charticles are all the rage in newspapers).

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  2. Journalism is the mecca of those who wish they could write but can't ..so they make up the news and try to fancy it up with $5.00 words and their own ideas.

    You can't read a piece anymore in papers without seeing the stupid jerk journalist add in their 2 cents and opinion.

    It should be just facts but now you get "think pieces" from every hometown hack.

    The solution is to turn off CNN, don't buy newspapers be they daily, weekly or monthly.
    Let them disappear into the mud where they belong.

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  3. Oh.. newsprint is good for lining garbage pails, birdcages and for wrapping fish.
    Journalists are good for nothing.

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  4. Anonymous19/11/08

    "Meanwhile the Arts section of the Chicago Tribune wonders whether Obama will restore Jazz to the White House."
    Jazz? And they call everyone else racist?
    Okay..I have to ask....is there going to be a watermelon patch at the white house too?
    Because ,you know, if you're black you must like jazz ditto watermelon...
    Good grief...what have we come to?

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  5. Anonymous19/11/08

    I believe that the one thing that these "cult of personality" types cannot stand is ridicule.

    I'm going to have fun mocking and ridiculing Obama every time he screws up.

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  6. BBC World Servive; the same story, been hearing only about Obama for the first couple of days after the election and even now you can still hear a presentator ask seriously but out of the blue during an item on the Mexican mafia that happens to be really bad with deathsquads and bilions and coruption on all levels and submarines and all if ' Things will improve now that Obama will be in power, will he fix it ? '
    Then there was pause for a second and they had to admit that probably this would not be the case.
    But still, that tells you about the Messianic aura Obama has. So far for serious journalism.

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  7. focused ridicule is indeed one of the best weapons against a naked emperor

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  8. I don't want to go as far as calling Barack Obama tyrannical, or even blaming him for much of this. The Presidency up until recently has always involved some degree of adoration, and the more cult-like aspects of Obama's adoration are coming from people that don't really know what freedom is. Our schools don't teach that, after all - they teach us that all American power is bad, that anyone who stood up against traditional values has to be venerated, and that people like Che and Mao are just as good as Truman or Reagan in terms of being world leaders.

    Obama during his campaign just picked up on people's worshipfulness and used it to win the job. I really don't want to blame him for this because no candidate would turn that opportunity down.

    While I disagree with the part of your article attacking Obama, I very much agree that the media must be taken to task for this slavishness. This is beyond awful, and newspapers and TV outlets need to start going out of business en masse. All of us deserve better than this fawning nonsense.

    Adding you to my blogroll, your articles on Digg are terrific.

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  9. If Obama's naked can I do a Nelson Munz "ha ha" to ridicule the big old pimple on Obama's butt?

    Lemon: that's why I prefer to call myself a reporter and not a journalist. I hate that almost every political analyst on the Sunday talk shows are journalists. I wouldn't mind if they were intelligent and unbiased but they're not. Every introduction begins with "a journalist for the (name the news outlet)."

    Print and broadcast media really should but an end to political endorsements, which is basically the ugly 'pay for praise,' which should be illegal. Take out big full or half page display ads and get an endorsement and favorable coverage.

    The BBC has gone gaga over Obama (which one female newscaster repeatedly pronounces "Obamer." Bomber with an O tacked on to the beginning.

    *****

    A watermellon patch at the White House? Probably. But he'll probably Eighty-Six the annual Christmas tree lighting and Menorah lighting in favor of Kwanza.

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  10. Anonymous19/11/08

    Keli Ata....yup...I am afraid that will be the reality. No Christmas tree, no Menorah, no traditional Easter egg hunt....it will be all new age fabricated holidays like Kwanza.
    Now if they would only print out all the white house invitations in Ebonics it will be complete.
    I guess carolers singing "White Christmas" will be pretty much out of the picture too huh?
    Here in California where it has been very fashionable lately to be anti-Semitic certain people [who should know better] are already saying that "things really need to change at the white house."
    In other words...out with the Christian and Jewish traditions and in with the Muslim interlopers "traditions".
    So I suppose they could always change the Easter egg hunt into a grenade throwing competition. And instead of a Christmas tree and Menorah they could always just hang a few gay people and set a couple of women on fire.
    Once Obama is gone I'm afraid there won't be enough Lysol on the planet to get the stench of the likes of Ayers and Farrakhan out of the Lincoln bedroom. Yeah...think about who is going to be staying in the Lincoln bedroom.
    There's a chilling thought. And we all thought the Clintons were bad.......

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  11. You'll know he's reached his peak of fame when the pope has little statues of him made to put on your dashboard with Saint Obama written at the bottom. Maybe they'll make it a St. Obama bubblehead! LOL

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  12. Watermelon?
    Racist Much? Jerks Much? Disgusting Much?

    I am appalled.
    Shut up.

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  13. Fabricated? You mean like Christmas is fabricated?
    Pot/kettle

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  14. Sorry Lemon. I was just joking with Christmas ghost. No offense intended.

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  15. Anonymous19/11/08

    I'm sure the next White House egg hunt will consist of kids searching for Easter Eggs with Obama's picture on them

    and expect to see lots of Imams trotting through those halls

    if they do keep Christmas, it will stay Obama as the crybaby messiah

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  16. Anonymous19/11/08

    Easter and Christmas are pagan holidays who cares how they are ruined? Let them be. They deserve to be as they are an afront to G-d.

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  17. ROFL Yobee. Obama will be the new patron saint of drivers, since saint christopher was de-sainted years ago.

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  18. Easter and Christmas are pagan holidays who cares how they are ruined? Let them be. They deserve to be as they are an afront to G-d.

    9:18 PM

    Of course they're pagan holidays. But all the joking about doing away with the xmass tree, menorah and easter egg hunts and even watermellon are just a way for people to joke about what frightens them. That is, that under Obama's rule this country is going to change radically. He promised change.

    He'll make good on that promise. The trouble is, what kind of change? Instituting only afro-centric and Muslim holiday observances? Kwanza? Eid al adha? A confused blur of all religious symbols into an new hybrid religion in which he is either messiah and or a god all rolled into one?

    ReplyDelete

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