Swompdonkey

One More Day... Then Everything's OK!

It is entirely appropriate at this juncture to declare that the American media have abdicated their role. They are no longer in the journalism business, but in the Obama-electing business. I’m also looking for the “landslide” calls to start coming in sometime early in the evening. Game over, people, why bother fighting the inevitable?

Of course, not everyone in the media has settled comfortably into this new job. Nobody has laid a glove on Ovama for months, and now with seconds to spare, some are belatedly waking up to the fact that he has gotten a bit of an easy ride? "Quick, fellahs uh, come up with something! Anything!!!" says the drowsy editor as he comes out of his year-long stupor.

Slate thinks the campaign should release their donor's list? Are you kidding me? Don't you think Obama's people have better things to do? Like planning the victory rally!?! Besides, how the hell do they explain all those silly pseudonyms if they do that! Sheesh, the nerve of some people.

Contrary to most of the unconverted, I blame none of this on Obama himself. His campaign would have been stupid to not take advantage of the felicitous circumstances they have found themselves in for months now. But if (or, as some would have it, when), we discover that the emperor has no clothes, the media will bear a share of the responsibility.

At this point, expectations have been raised to such a ridiculous level that the chosen one could not possibly deliver on everything he has pledged. The result, of course, will be bitterness and dissappointment for some when the Obama begin to artfully scale back those expectations, as some claim they have already begun doing.

What has driven this twenty-month phenomenon? Is it idealism? The immense personal charisma of one man? The dream of a new golden age? The desire to turn the page on race once and for all? The unseemly urge to be “liked” by the rest of the world, as if that was of any consequence? I'm baffled, but I look on in amazement as America takes this titanic leap of faith into the abyss.