"The week the Obama backlash started" - From the Guardian (UK)

[sueragingroz]

This is to those who thought that I was being disingenuous with my "Obamaton" thread.

Now that it looks like Obama has it in the bag and Hillary is on the ropes, it's time for the knives to come out...


An excerpt from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/24/barackobama.hillaryclinton:

Back in 1995 it would have seemed like meeting just another group of left-wing academics in liberal Chicago. Barack Obama, then about to be an Illinois state senator, was taken to an activists' gathering at the house of William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

So far, so innocuous. Except now Obama is running for president and Ayers and Dohrn - both Illinois professors - were once members of the Weather Underground, a radical Sixties group that planted bombs across America.

Thus the long-forgotten meeting resurfaced late last week in a detailed news story on the respected politics website Politico under the blaring headline: 'Obama once visited 60s terrorists.'

For a candidate long used to an overwhelmingly positive press, it was a jarring headline. But with Obama's new status as the Democrats' clear frontrunner, a media backlash is now showing clear signs of gathering pace.

The Politico story was not alone last week. In the New York Times, two influential columnists weighed in with brutal attacks against Obama. David Brooks called him a 'trophy messiah' and Paul Krugman claimed Obama's campaign was '...dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality'. Meanwhile, in the Boston Globe, Obama supporter Margery Eagan expressed her own doubts about her pick. 'I'm nervous because John McCain says Obama is an "eloquent but empty call for change" and in the wee, wee hours a nagging voice whispers: "Suppose McCain's right,' Eagan wrote.

Nor was it confined to print. On television, ABC's respected Nightline show ran a segment on Obama's often wildly enthusiastic supporters and compared 'Obama-mania' to the Beatlemania of the Sixties. Anchor Terry Moran asked: 'Is this a political movement or a personality cult?' On cable channel MSNBC, a hapless Obama backer, Texan state senator Kirk Watson, was harangued by host Chris Matthews to 'name any' of Obama's legislative achievements. When Watson failed, the clip became a huge Youtube hit.

[Occam Bandage]

1. Hm. RW columnist, pro-Hillary columnist, RW political commentary site...

yeah, huge backlash we got cookin' here.

[libbygurl]

4. ABC, NY Times, MSNBC... are right wing? The UK Guardian?

nt

[Occam Bandage]

5. David Brooks is. Tweety is a hack. The Guardian is puffing here.

[dchill]

6. They are lashing back...

with damp pasta.

[mculator]

2. K&R-- it's not as if

Europe hasn't been pro-clinton this whole race, however.

[libbygurl]

3. What's Europe got to do with it (to paraphrase Tina Turner)? It's the US media stories being

...observed by a UK newspaper, and the trend that's being noted.