Canada and Other Matters of Opinion by Rex Murphy Page A

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 WashingtonPost
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 the perspiration-saturated pages of chicklit: “The sun glinted off chiseled pectorals sculpted during four weightlifting sessions each week, and a body toned by regular treadmill runs and basketball games.”
    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 worthwondering 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 …”
A CLICHÉD DUD | January 24, 2009
    Put him on a platform and Barack Obama can take any string of words and make them sing. He’s the best speech performer of our day.
    His voice has charm and power. He has an instinctive sense of the lyric and rhythmic underpinning of