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Go Home Obama Cult Watch

THE PLANK JULY 1, 2008

Obama Cult Watch

BY JAMES KIRCHICK

Is Barack Obama an "enlightened being?"

Many spiritually advanced people
I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual)
identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who
has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health
care plans or whatnot, 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. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.

Granted, this tour-de-force was published in the San Francisco Chronicle. But it's still really creepy.  

--James Kirchick 

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21 comments

Must be all that enlightenment that led him to throw our Constitution under the bus.

I want all you Obama partisans to call your candidate.

Tell him,.. beg him to show a little leadership.

Stop domestic spying -  Stop the FISA 'compromise' Now!

- TheOldRedBarn

July 1, 2008 at 1:27am

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Kirchick, your titles alone give you away. Come on, don't be so intellectually dishonest. You know only a handful of Obama supporters revere him as some messianic messenger from the heavens. Please stop insulting my intelligence by saying I've joined a cult. If nothing else, the San Francisco Chronicle piece is just proof that columnists run out of things to say on presidential campaigns. And it's nearly a month old.

- rozenson

July 1, 2008 at 3:39am

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James - I'm sure most of the musings of the San Francisco Chronicle (one of the worst papers in the country) are amusing to you, but they represent almost nothing, almost no one.  There are far more credible sources for you to filter your biases through.

- Wandreycer1

July 1, 2008 at 6:10am

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Jamie Kirchik - no obscure, irrelevant liberal kook is safe from him. Fighting the windmills on day one!

- jobeek2

July 1, 2008 at 6:45am

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JK,

You're a joke. Go grind your axe on The Spine and leave the writing and commentary to others.

- mpatrickhendri

July 1, 2008 at 7:46am

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No less creepy than the millions who thought GWB was sent by God to lead us. In fact, much less creepy.

- ryanmacd

July 1, 2008 at 7:56am

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Hey, I'd appreciate it if you'd all please stop mocking the Obamist faith.

- guyminuslife

July 1, 2008 at 9:06am

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Almost as scary as someone who would think that GWB is "the smartest person I've ever met."  Oh, no, wait... he wanted to put this person ON THE SUPREME COURT!!

- prnoonan

July 1, 2008 at 9:25am

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god kirchick...you never learn....

- thejauntyboulevardier

July 1, 2008 at 9:40am

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Stop the Kirchick bashing!  This IS really creepy, and we should be making fun of the people who wrote it, not the guy who brought it to our attention for the sole purpose of making fun of the people who wrote it.

- bcbaird

July 1, 2008 at 10:01am

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James Kirchick, blogging at the speed of geology.

Seriously, dude, did you send a mule team to San Francisco via the Oregon Trail and back to retrieve this op-ed? One can just imagine Kirchick doffing his humburg and exclaiming to his officemates, "O-ho, look what dispatch just arrived by the overland stage! 'Tis an artilcle from a news-paper in the California Territory, and it does suggest that one of the current candidates for the office of the presidency is like unto the messiah! Fie, man, to the presses!"

Blogging about this silly op-ed as though it matters is stupid. Blogging about it a month after the fact is unforgivable. Not on the basis of content, but on old-fashioned journalistic grounds of newsworthiness. You don't run month-old AP wire stories, and you don't blog month-old daily newspaper op-eds. This is not the first time I've wondered if Kirchick ever even wrote for a college newspaper; no minimally competent editor would put up with this crap. I don't mind that Kirchick writes stuff I disagree with. I mind that he gets away with being a bad journalist and a bad writer. His career is like an experiment: If you gave the least intellectually serious commenter at Free Republic or the Corner a job in the mainstream media, could anyone tell the difference between him and a real journalist?

- rhubarbs

July 1, 2008 at 10:05am

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Let's not be so hard on Jamie - the world needs Darkworkers too.

- geoffgraham

July 1, 2008 at 10:53am

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way to channel T. Herman Zweibel, Rhubarbs.

- perkowitz

July 1, 2008 at 11:00am

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On the other hand, I was indeed wondering what that strange penumbra of light could be, that surrounds Obama a moments of great inspirational delivery . . .

What?  I'm just saying what I saw, is all!

- ironyroad

July 1, 2008 at 11:37am

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I think it's creepy too -- Obama's is a brilliant politician, who I believe has more integrity than most, and is certainly more intelligent than most, whose candidacy just happens to also be historic for the obvious reasons, but to be awed by him in this way is silliness. However, most I've met who don't like the guy, think that those of us who do support him are "drinking the koolaid" for this very reason. THey can't believe that we're voting for him without believing it's a mystical experience.

- scire

July 1, 2008 at 12:21pm

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Guyminuslife gets my vote for best comment so far (I wonder if Obamaists can file for a tax break with the IRS?).

- jet

July 1, 2008 at 12:36pm

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I consider Mark Morford, the piece's author, to be among the most perceptive, entertaining, and often brutally honest columnists in the country. I read him regularly, I read Kirchick regularly and, frankly, there's no comparison.

To understand Morford you have to understand his style, which takes work and time, like most pursuits of value. You can't just scan something, apply your biases, and come away with a conclusion that's meaningful to anyone not out of freshman English Comp.

Morford riffs. He blows the way Miles or Bird blew--sometimes he misses his notes, but sometimes he hits notes you didn't even know existed, and those are the ones that stick with you. Not the misses, which you allow him, just as you allow any human being their irrelevant weaknesses in order to profit from their relevant strengths.

Some people will hear bebop for decades without getting it, because they don't know how to listen. Similarly, Kirchick's problem is that he doesn't know how to read. Using sarcasm ('tour de force") or summary judgments about rival publications like the Chronicle is, um, contraindicated when one misreads what one is so quick to criticize.

Do I think Obama's some sort of extraterrestrial spiritually advanced being? No, I do not. But I could be wrong--I've been wrong before, more often than I've been right. And so I read. And I listen. The jazz I pooh-poohed as a teenager is now the core of my musical diet.

Closing one's mind to ideas that sound silly or counterintuitive or unreasonable seems to me not the best course for someone purporting to earn a living in media. And, for anyone who calls himself a human being, it's just sad.

- williamyard

July 1, 2008 at 1:08pm

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PEOPLE:

PUT...THE...KOOLAID...DOWN...NICE AND SLOW...THAT"S IT...PUT...THE...KOOLAID...DOWN...STOP...DRINKING...IT...BEFORE IT AFFECTS YOU ANY MORE...PUT...THE...KOOLAID...DOWN!!!!!!

- nikkiwhite

July 1, 2008 at 1:23pm

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isn't this just a way to say that obama is a transformative politician ala reagan just in a really creepy way?

- lamh31

July 1, 2008 at 1:50pm

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I think what it is is that the current president is so widely reviled, to the extent that even many of his former supporters are actually personally embarrassed by his performance as our nation's president, that the desire for changed leadership affects a lot of people's most fundamental emotions and sense of personal identity within the larger culture. Which is to say, revulsion at President Bush now approaches for many people the level of religious experience, as did support for President Bush for many people between 1999 and 2005. Along comes Obama, who for a number of reasons triggers very little pattern-recognition with the strongly felt Bush pattern, and so he offers many Americans a positive relief for their strongly negative emotions regarding the leadership of the body politic.

Plus, you know, the man has charisma on loan from the ghost of Cary Grant. Charisma like that goes a long way. Throw Obama's extraordinary personal charisma into the nexus of near-religious yearning to be done with Bush, and you've got the recipe for people going a little overboard for him.

But it's neither new nor worrisome. The pseudo-religious mania for Andrew Jackson was so strong that after he lost the 1824 presidential election that at least one state Democratic Party immediately renominated him for the 1828 election --  four years early! Others have engendered similar mass hysteria; William Jennings Bryan, for example, or, yes, Ronald Reagan. True leaders are leaders precisely because they inspire us to believe things strongly enough to act on them -- which is also a reasonable definition of "religion."

- rhubarbs

July 1, 2008 at 2:25pm

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hey, I  just saw that kirchick has expanded his sphere of lunacy and is now blogging on politico.com. Great. Congrats. I hope they hire you full time. Leave your blogging key on the table as you leave the chat room...

- thejauntyboulevardier

July 2, 2008 at 9:00am

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