Dee Dee Myers wrote a fawing piece for Vanity Fair, claiming Barack Obama’s the most famous living person ever. She postulates that the worldwide frenzy over The One is due to advances in technology.
To be sure, the digital revolution has made this feat of fame possible. Not only has it helped the son of an erstwhile Kenyan goatherd to become president, it has allowed a current Kenyan goatherd to follow the former’s journey. And he is not alone. Exponential growth in access to the Internet, satellite television and radio, cell phones, and P.D.A.’s means that breaking news now reaches virtually every corner of the globe. At the same time, population continues to grow; there are now some 6.7 billion men, women, and children on earth, an historic high.
Oh but it isn’t just technology, it’s The One himself.
But technology and biology don’t totally explain the Obama phenomenon. There’s no denying that the world has been utterly captivated by the new American president with the international pedigree. His black African father, white American mother, Muslim middle name, and childhood spent partially in Asia make him more than the 21st-century embodiment of the classic American melting pot; his story makes him accessible to people the world over who might see in his life a few scenes from their own.
She failed to recognize or admit that the media’s fawning and drooling over the President has anything at all to do with his rapid rise to fame. I suppose that’s just a coincidence. He magically appears on just about every magazine cover on the Newstands. I especially liked this one.
At least Mad Magazine has a sense of humor. But I digress.
Just to show how out of touch she is with half of America, Ms. Myers opined that President Obama has restored faith in America.
Gone is the hunkered-down defensiveness of the past eight years, the lock-the-doors, draw-the-curtains, load-the-guns-to-keep-out-the-bad-guys mentality that turned so much of the world against us. In its place is the restoration of that classic American optimism, eyes lifted to the horizon, reaching out across continents and oceans, not in fear, but with faith that we can help build a better world. It was no accident that President Obama’s first televison interview from the White House went not to an American network but to an Arab one.
Is she kidding? His appearance on Arab TV made me want to lock the doors, draw the curtains and load the guns to keep out the bad guys.
When are these people going to get a clue?
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