Link to Michelle Malkin's Site

Why? Because when I hear about the "Obama Youth," "Obama Youth Parade," and "Obama Children's Choir," my mind also goes down this path.

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/10/02/the-obama-childrens-chorus-recut/

Disturbing. Very disturbing. But others have also had a cult of personality around them. What's a cult of personality? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_of_personality

Believe it or not, but there was a section about Barack Obama on that page, before it got removed (and the page semi-protected.) In my opinion (and this is my opinion here) most of the edits removing Obama from the cult page are being done by a handful of people (read: three.)

There's also an edit war going on over there. I went into the archives and found this on an old page:

I need to add something quickly. You'll notice that to the left of the Internet Explorer icon on the taskbar, there's an empty window. That's because I had another window open and didn't want it to show. (It's nothing nasty, just a game I tabbed out of temporarily.) So I did edit the picture to remove the name of the game from the tab. That is the only revision I made to the screenshot.

The caption under Obama's picture says "A modern example of Cult of personality." Granted, since I'm an editor on Wikipedia I could easily unprotect the page and add it (and the deleted section of "Examples in Democracies" back in, but I won't do that. The talk seems to be in favour of protecting the page until after the election.

But that begs the question: has the liberal media made a Cult of Personality around Barack Obama?

Indeed, there is another blogger here on Blogspot.com who seems to think so: http://langtry.blogspot.com/2007/02/is-barack-obama-cult-of-personality.html

Another link, this to an Op-Ed (Opinion-Editorial) article at the New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/11/opinion/11krugman.html

In the article, Mr Krugman writes this: "I won’t try for fake evenhandedness here: most of the venom I see is coming from supporters of Mr. Obama, who want their hero or nobody. I’m not the first to point out that the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality. We’ve already had that from the Bush administration — remember Operation Flight Suit? We really don’t want to go there again." (emphasis added)

Granted, this is an Op-Ed (Opinion-Editorial) article so Mr Krugman is giving us his opinion. But as I've said before, the Op-Ed pages and personal blogs/journals are the places to give opinions. If Mr Krugman had presented his opinion as fact I would indeed have a problem with it. However, he didn't. He correctly placed his article (which gave us his opinion) on the Op-Ed section. I wouldn't think of faulting him for that.

I will, however, correct him on something. A bit further on in the article, he writes: "For example, Al Gore was subjected to Clinton rules during the 2000 campaign: anything he said, and some things he didn’t say (no, he never claimed to have invented the Internet), was held up as proof of his alleged character flaws."

One slight correction: I have a clip of Al Gore saying "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." It was during an interview with Wolf Blitzer on 9-MAR-1999. So while he didn't claim to invent it, he did claim to have taken the initiative to create it.

But to get back to topic, has the media created a Cult of Personality around Obama? Another link: http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2008/02/obama-a-cult-of.html

"There is a clear and rising chorus on the left-liberal side of the spectrum that expresses worry about a cult of personality around Barak [sic] Obama."

Woah!! Even some on the left are now worried about it! A Google search on the terms " "Cult of Personality" AND Obama" returns (stand back) "about 330,000." YIKES.

That, my friends, scares the hell out of me.

In my opinion, it should scare you too.