( – promoted by buhdydharma )
Crooks and Liars notes that the backlash against ‘Obama-mania’ has begun in earnest. On February 15, eager to collect her 30 pieces of silver, CNN’s Coral Costanzo joined the mob smearing Obama as the leader of a messianic cult:
COSTELLO: Many political observers say they’ve never seen anything like it. Thousands wait in line to see him, and it seems with every speech, they always latch onto Obama’s three favorite words.
OBAMA: Yes, we can.
COSTELLO: Obama supporters wildly respond, chanting enthusiastically along with their candidate. But it’s a scene some increasingly find not inspirational but “creepy.”
By God, it can’t be denied. Americans saying “Yes We Can” sure is creepy. It’s almost as creepy as crowds responding enthusiastically to the chants of other notorious cult leaders like this:
“Push ’em back! Push ’em back! WAY back! We like it! We like it!”
WTF? Every time I turn around, creepy socialist sluts like this are inciting sedition and slandering Republicans when they aren’t busy fornicating with Negroes under the bleachers.
Four score and seven Friedman Units ago, when Obama was getting ready to enroll in kindergarten so he could begin plotting his Machiavellian ascent to the Presidency, I narrowly avoided getting lured into this cult:
Tragically, millions of other young Americans across this country were not as fortunate. When the creepy leaders of this cult asked “Who’s the leader of the club, that’s made for you and me?” hordes of White and Negro children coast-to-coast chanted in messianic ecstasy:
M-I-C-K-E-Y!
M-O-U-S-E!
The consequences were hideous.
As Carol Costanzo’s crack reporting clarified, Americans have to be on their toes this time so Obama’s “Yes We Can” doesn’t turn us all into democracy loving freaks who don’t adequately appreciate all the massive spying, oil blitzkriegs, and fascist propaganda our criminal “government” and brain dead hack journalists are providing for us.
Will Bunch sums up the smear campaign the corporate media is unleashing on Obama: “passion + politics = cult”:
Joel Stein of the Los Angeles Times smears Obama and his supporters as “the Cult of Obama.”
ABC’s Jake Tapper pulled this despicable smear out of his corporate media ass: “Obama worshipers” exhibit “Helter-Skelter cultish qualities.”
Joe Klein: “There’s something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism.”
Charles Krauthammer: “Obama’s mesmeric power has begun to arouse skepticism and misgivings among the mainstream media.
David Brooks: “Obama’s people are so taken with their messiah that soon they’ll be selling flowers at airports and arranging mass weddings. There’s a “Yes We Can” video floating around YouTube in which a bunch of celebrities like Scarlett Johansson and the guy from the Black Eyed Peas are singing the words to an Obama speech in escalating states of righteousness and ecstasy. If that video doesn’t creep out normal working-class voters, then nothing will.”
If your fascist head wasn’t lodged so far up your fascist ass, David Brooks, you’d have noticed by now that it’s that CULT in Washington D.C. that’s creeping everyone out.
Cults engage in deception, the group leaders tell members to withhold truth from outsiders.
Is Obama lying and withholding the truth from America? No. But BushCo’s Beltway Cult is lying and withholding the truth from America.
In Cults, questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.
Is Obama suppressing dissent and punishing those who question or doubt? No. But BushCo’s Beltway Cult is suppressing dissent and punishing those who question or doubt.
Cults are elitist, and claim a special, exalted status for leaders and members.
Is Obama elitist? Does he claim special, exalted status? No. But every egomaniac criminal and complicit hack in BushCo’s Beltway Cult claims special, exalted, we’re above the law and you’re not status.
Cults have a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which causes conflict with the wider society.
Does Obama have a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which causes conflict with the wider society? No. But BushCo’s BELTWAY CULT is polarizing the whole world against us and exploits the conflict they incite.
Cults teach or imply that their supposedly exalted ends justify means that members would have considered unethical before joining the group.
Who teaches or implies that their supposedly exalted patriotism justifies torturing human beings, secret prisons, massive illegal spying, wars for oil, and the relentless destruction of American democracy? THOSE BELTWAY CULT FASCISTS, THAT’S WHO.
A Cult leader is not accountable to any authorities.
Yeah, we know that. Everyone in that Beltway Cult has made it very clear that George Walker Bush can lie to us, spy on us, kill our soldiers, bankrupt our country, shit on our Constitution, our laws, and every one of us. And then do it again the next day. With smirking impunity.
What is the standard smear tactic of this psychotic sack of shit?:
Rove attacks an opponent’s greatest strength and turns it into a liability. John Kerry the war hero was smeared as a coward and betrayer of his fellow soldiers. Obama the inspiring leader is being smeared as the dangerous founder of a Helter Skelter cult.
Karl Rove, BushCo’s happy assassin, is back.
Why isn’t that traitor in a prison cell? Why hasn’t he been indicted, convicted, and locked up in a penitentiary, Patrick Fitgerald? John Conyers? Henry Waxman? Pat Leahy? NANCY PELOSI? HARRY REID?
Because you’re all fucking cowards.
That’s why.
117 comments
Skip to comment form
Author
thousand years from now.
but I think we have to throw the baby out with the dishwater…
they will have us fighting to disprove their assertions about Obama. and that is focusing on the wrong thing. imo. lesson from Kerry.
how do we change that focus? show how much alike the cult of Bush and Obama are. exploit the media’s trick and turn it back on BushCo. Or show the wingnut crowd throwing themselves on the ground after having hands laid on them… and say these people are voting for McCain or whomever. and say yeah, those cults are funky.
we need to think differently. they can mount this offensive. we can cut off their escape routes by exposing the tactics
like the 64,000 question.
Growing up the way I did, I know me some cults. And I have always recognized my own tendency to lead with my head first as a result of that. My heart will follow – but I don’t let it take the lead. So I’m frankly offended by all this talk of messianic cults.
Perhaps if we hadn’t been so starved for authenticity for so long, the reaction to Obama might not be so strong. And I’m not saying Obama is completely authentic…just that anything that whiffs of the possibility can get our juices going these days. And from my viewpoint, we’re going to need those juices if we are going to have a prayer of cleaning out the muck.
Author
afternoon.
The right hates any cult that does not conforms to the idea of keeping thing exactly the way they are and maybe even rolling social roles back 50 or a hundred years.
The people who listen to Hannity and Limbaugh and agree with absolutely everything they say aren’t in a cult? The people who attend those giant mega churches aren’t in a cult?
I am candidate agnostic, but the cult labeling is clearly a tactic designed to completely eliminate the possibility that yearnings for democracy and the potential for change that Obama says he wants to help deliver, are completely and utterly legitimate. The right tend to freak out when faced with actual democracy and democratic ideals.
as Obama draws Republicans. I watched his speech on cspan and afterwards they had a bunch of phone ins, all the Republicans were saying they would vote for Obama. They are probably freaked because he can break the 49/50 vote split. As much as the elites and wingers foam at the mouth about HRC I believe that she’s their girl.
My tin foil hat theory has always been that they wanted her for the nominee. All the big bad money shifted to her. As with Kerrry, Mr. Skull and Bones, it’s as they used to say a win win situation if she wins. They have no fears of regulation and the money and power stays where they want it, for the “new wars” and in the corporate pillagers hands.
Obama and Howard Dean may break the old voter equation that kept turnout low and kept the voters at each others throats, rather then on the possibility that political reality is bottom up. This probably scares the crap out of all of them. While Obama is not a fire breathing populist he seems, as Howard Dean did, to inspire people who are to the right and left of him by projecting people power and a reverence for democratic principles.
Good luck corporate media, your grip is slipping. I think that Obamamania is an expression of total discontent with the whole process and a thirst for a real choice. They say their both the same policy/position wise. I don’t believe it. Hillary has been spun centrist but she not. Obama, who in the past I’ve been leery of, has a better chance of actually getting that elusive and tweeked ‘political will’ behind him and maybe moving the reality towards an actual middle and majority. Then again maybe he’s just another pol, but at least he is getting people back in the process.
… like lemmings (or perhaps a cult, lol) picking the lowest common denominator to pull in ratings, pull in an audience, to try and show they are above the fray and give us their wise counsel … it’s all about them, their prestige, their power and I think Americans are catching on to that.
It’ll be interesting to see how Obama deals with this. There is definitely a wave of intense feelings over his campaign, many people are projecting their own emotions on him … including the fucking stupid lamestream (h/t lasthorseman) media.
I did that myself in the past, when I was younger, and it did me no harm. I’m older now and aware that no politician is going to be my savior. But I’ll be damned if I won’t help in any way I can younger folks, or maybe less disaffected older folks, from going through that experience — and finding their own way as citizens of this country.
This “cult” crap won’t be the only thing the lamestream media will cook up as intelligent analysis (ha! ha!).
Ultimately it will be Obama who has to respond to this crap. I’ll be watching to see what he says … but the bottom line for me is that my attention is not going to be held hostage by either the Presidential campaign or the fucking stupid lamestream media.
Excellent essay, Rusty — as usual.
He wouldn’t be attacked and smeared if he weren’t a threat to them… if they weren’t afraid.
now that I’ve tuned into Obama I think he’s pretty smart. The media underestimates his intelligence as they are freakin stupid. My husband made me see him from another angle the other night when he said “I would not want to mess with this guy.” He tuned into the steely scrappy part. I think he can handle the crap he’ll get without appearing mean spirited.
I thought Wayne was going to fall off his chair.
I would like to see this made into a utube so that if you searched for Obama and cult, it would pop up. Might show some people how ridiculous they are.
I start to think there is some credence.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02…
Just as today, Krugman reminds us again about poverty.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02…
but as juvenile as a high school pep rally.
yes we can! (which was actually my high school football team’s slogan. in the late 1970s. but we won two state championships, so i guess it works!)
fired up!
ready to go!
change we can believe in!
hope!
issues? what are those?
Come to think of it I have always been “abnormal”.
Never been impressed by people and that makes hero worship alien to me.
Bush isn’t in jail because Bildeburg runs the world. He has in fact served the purpose well by building a reactionary force against conservatism. I see the “left” as next up to bat in the US scene and by left I mean the dailykos style of left.
Ah, by that time we will all be getting paid in worthless Ameros and America will be a footnote in history.