Obamamania: Pass the defibrillator

"It is now 16 or 17 years since I saw the Queen of France ... and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision."

That's Edmund Burke reflecting on the fate of Marie Antoinette. He was, as we should say today, a fan. "I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in; glittering like the morning star, full of life, and splendour, and joy."

The prose has a touch of that Chris Matthews "thrill up my leg" quality, although of course infinitely more refined than anything produced to date, either above or below, the host of Hardball's knee: "I thought 10,000 swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone ..."

Prophetic Burke. He was right about the age of chivalry. But the age of powdered encomium, what we would call the "puff piece," is still very much with us.

Celebrity reportage, witlessness in full genuflection to tackiness, has exploded the meanings of flattery and self-abasement. Entertainment reporters, as they deliriously regard themselves, are high-paid oxymorons. They all but lick the shoes of those they cover, and even that exemption is, I'm fairly confident, not total.

Till very recently, the worship of celebrities was more or less confined to high-gloss, low-IQ entertainment magazines and their TV equivalents. But with the advent of Barack Obama -- and I should insist, not at his prompting -- it has done a worrisome crossover. In the year blessedly past, we had a column in the San Francisco Chronicle that makes even Burke's ode seem hesitant, ambiguous even.

The columnist wrote, gasped, thrilled, vibrated that Mr. Obama was "... that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health-care plans ... but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve." Rhapsody is too timid a word.

Mr. Obama, the column reveals, is a Lightworker, a new-age messianic superpresence. The heading over this prostration, er, column was: "Is Obama an enlightened being?" Call Steven Spielberg. E.T. is back.

There have been other descriptions of Mr. Obama during the primaries and the election that have been almost as dementedly ardent.

Normally, the press stands apart from mass adulation. Not so with Mr. Obama. A recent report in The Washington Post read like a mash note from a teenager. The article had a picture of the Lightworker, shirtless, and commented: "... he was photographed looking like the paradigm of a new kind of presidential fitness, one geared less toward preventing heart attacks than winning swimsuit competitions." I beg to differ. Pass the defibrillator, now.

The reporter/disciple was, however, just warming up. Next he galloped off into territory left unexplored even in chicklit: "The sun glinted off chiselled pectorals sculpted during four weightlifting sessions each week, and a body toned by regular treadmill runs and basketball games."

The press should be trimming these fantasies, not constructing them. But it's easier to sigh than to analyze.

If this guy gives up the politics beat, there are a hundred massage parlours out there thirsty for this kind of copy. This is The Washington Post, remember. Has the financial crisis tipped the collective media mind into entertainment reporting mode?

Very little of this, I repeat, is Mr. Obama's fault. (Although that famous line of his on winning the nomination as "the moment when the rise of the seas began to slow and the planet began to heal" was an unhappy toe-dip into the waters of absurd self-inflation.) But if the mainstream press offers "the sun glinted off chiselled pectorals," let's stop calling it news. This is Baywatch punditry.

Not worth a mention? On the contrary. There swirls around the figure or persona of Mr. Obama a set of expectations radically disconnected from rationality. He cannot possibly match the fantasies he inspires in some. It's worth wondering whether eight years of equal but opposite irrationality -- the hysterically negative coverage of George W. Bush -- has produced its own counter-response. Or whether that strand of new-age therapeutics, the Dr. Phil/Oprah "self-realization" claptrap, has warped U.S. politics into a kind of abysmal "healing workshop." That would certainly account for some Americans thinking they've elected a Lightworker rather than a president.

The press should be trimming these fantasies, not constructing them. But it's easier to sigh than to analyze. So on inauguration day, don't be surprised if you read a story that begins (alas, poor Burke) ... "and surely never lighted on this orb, which he hardly seemed to touch..."

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Rex Murphy, "Obamamania: Pass the defibrillator." Globe & Mail (January 3, 2009).

Reprinted with permission of Rex Murphy.

THE AUTHOR

Rex Murphy is host of CBC Radio One's Cross-Country Checkup and contributes weekly TV essays on diverse topics to CBC TV's The National. (See Rex's TV commentaries). In addition, he writes book reviews, commentaries, and a weekly column, Japes of Wrath, for the Globe & Mail.

Rex Murphy was born near St. John's, Newfoundland, where he graduated from Memorial University. In l968, he went to Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. His primary interest is in language and English literature, but he also has a strong link with politics. His first book, Points of View, is described on Amazon: "With TV commentator and journalist Rex Murphy, it's easy to put a twist on the old parable: when he is good he is very very good, and when he's angry, he's awesome. Uncommonly dignified, relentlessly honest, unencumbered by de rigueur political correctness, and solidly grounded by his Newfoundland roots, Murphy is that rarest of TV types. He's an everyman who happens to be a Rhodes Scholar, and a personality treasured for his brain, not his looks...A cranky intellect, maybe, but an intellect just the same. It's Murphy's almost reluctant cynicism -- delivered in language as sharp as shattered glass and aimed squarely at those in ivory towers -- that makes Points of View a must-read."

Copyright © 2009 Rex Murphy