Posted on 01/25/2009 12:49:41 PM PST by Schnucki
Life is blighted by the tyranny of the urgent over the important, as someone said. That is why, at the time of Barack Obama’s global triumph in Washington, I wasn’t watching the proceedings live on television but dealing with some urgent minor errands. It was very annoying, particularly when someone asked me why I wasn’t sitting enraptured in front of a television somewhere. Without thinking I replied that it wasn’t really important anyway: I was sick and tired of all the hoopla. Then I realised I wasn’t just being irritable: I really meant it.
I don’t mean that I am sick and tired of Obama. On the day when he was elected as the future president – more than 11 weeks ago now – I felt just as much joy as many millions of other people. The happiness of that moment hasn’t faded, nor has the reminder that politics can occasionally throw up someone who appears to be truly inspiring.
What has changed is that the public good feeling has, one way and another, been whipped up, day after day, into an excess of feeling. Excessive emotion, particularly the inflated emotion of the crowd, is something that should always be distrusted, especially in politics; there are plenty of sombre historical reasons for such misgivings.
By the time Obama’s inauguration day had finally arrived, these feelings had in many places reached a pitch that was almost hysterical. Quite apart from the razzmatazz all over the United States, people in this country had been behaving for days as if we were about to witness the second coming.
The hysteria was particularly marked among journalists and commentators, who were gripped by Obamamania. Those who couldn’t actually persuade their bosses to send them to Washington wrote think pieces in the tones of humble acolytes
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
Perhaps Obamamania will one day be chronicled in an updated version of Charles Mackay's classic from 1841 Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds (highly recommended).
Shouldn't be too hard now that he has only promised a tax cut to 95% of Americans and a change in the global weather for the better. < / sarcasm >
Okay...that one had me rolling my eyes so much I have a headache.
Gotta hand it to her, she took a different map to the same obama worship as all other journalists have.
*Anything* is more important than watching an event on television. Returning library books that aren't due yet, cleaning the dog's ears, writing to your mother-in-law ... if this person actually thinks watching the inauguration (*any* inauguration) is important, she's an idiot. The event will happen whether she, or anyone, sees it.
That’s why the article seemed interesting to me. It seems like even some of the acolytes are starting to shake off the strange enchantment and use their heads.
That is EXACTLY what I was thinking about through this whole ‘spectacle’.
I couldn’t bear to watch the ascension. It would be like watching 9/11 over again.
OH, now seriously, are we really going to shift the blame for Obama’s predictable failure from Bush to the MSM so soon?
Obama hangs with the rabble rousers. See, e.g., Wright and Ayers.
The fact that the moment was thought to be so happy and inspirational makes one want to throw up...
This article echoes Rush. He says often there’s a limit to the level of emotion that can be tapped into.
Current events read like the first chapter — The Mississippi Scheme — with only the names changed, to protect the guilty.
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