… is a wife who calls the shots:

But we’re supposed to lay off wifey?
I don’t think so.

(via Newsbusters)

When I posted about the massive rally for Obama in Oregon, I titled the post “rock star numbers.”

Well, whaddaya know? Obama got 75,000 people at his “rally” because the “rally” started life as a free concert [e.a.]:

Unmentioned in national reporting was the fact that Obama was preceded by a rare, 45-minute free concert by actual rock stars The Decemberists. The Portland-based band has drawn rave reviews from Rolling Stone magazine, which gave their 2005 album Picaresque four and a half stars (out of five), and another four and a half stars for 2007’s The Crane Wife.

How many of the people showed up to hear Obama, and how many to hear the band?

Good question! But it doesn’t matter, because the “optics,” as I referred to them, told the story. Or, rather, the pictures that were spread far and wide (including by yours truly) told exactly the Big Lie that Team Obama wanted to communicate—that there is a huge, unstoppable “movement” for the candidate.

Let’s examine that proposition. There are indeed a lot of people in America who are excited by Obama. Many millions have voted for him in the primaries, and he has sparked the excitement of the “creative community,” which has turned him into a pop culture phenom, which in turn has made him into a celebrity, with legions of fans—which is unusual, to say the least, for a political candidate..

Indeed, it’s been a long time since a politician excited the popular imagination to this extent. Obama brings a great deal of talent, intelligence, skill, and flexibility, and great craftiness, to the practice of politics. He is particularly effective at deflecting criticism. He does it by appealing to political correctness, public decorum, and popular prejudices. (When you are the model of personal dignity and decorum, and a very cool cat to boot, how could you go wrong by decrying “divisiveness,” “distractions,” “distortions,” “Bush’s war,” “Bush’s failed policies” “endless war,” “fear-mongering,” “the same old solutions,”?)

It’s all so effective that even I want to believe him. And that is precisely what makes me wary. Because I don’t join movements. I am naturally skeptical, and deeply suspicious of mass enthusiasms, particularly in politics. After all, if a movie star has a lot of unthinking fans, the worst that can happen is that the star gets too big for his/her britches and annoys the hell out of the rest of us due to overexposure. By contrast, if a political star has a lot of unthinking fans …

Not that Dreams from My Father is Mao’s Little Red Book. But no political star can possibly live up to the hopes that people place in him or her. There are no magic solutions to intractable, centuries-old problems. There are no easy answers. To exploit people’s hopes is, in my opinion, just as cynical as exploiting people’s fears.

Barack Obama is one of the most cynical politicians I’ve ever witnessed. He’s a snake oil peddler of the highest order—slicker even than Slick Willy.

Those influential people who are overexcited by him and should know better—the opinion leaders of the MSM—should, like me, take that as a signal to brake.

Instead, they’ve put the pedal to the metal, as Alessandra Stanley details in today’s New York Times.

Even her victory speech in Kentucky, shown live on cable news, was given perfunctory attention — a footnote to someone else’s page in history. When MSNBC called the Kentucky primary early in the evening, Tim Russert, host of “Meet the Press,” said her success with women and blue-collar voters “means Senator Obama has a lot of work to do” and sketched a rehabilitation plan. He did not mention Mrs. Clinton by name in that disquisition.

NBC simply erased Clinton from the picture, Ms. Stanley suggests. I would be full of admiration for Ms. Stanley’s courageous observation of a rival news organization if her own newspaper weren’t precisely guilty of the same thing.

Note that Clinton’s blowout of Obama in Kentucky isn’t even mentioned on the front page of the New York Times, or, for that matter, inside the news pages either. Indeed, as the headline writer says,

Clinton Fades Even in a Victory

Asserting their primacy, the media elite—from NBC to the New York Times—closes ranks and declares that it’s a victory only when they say it’s a victory. Obama is the clear winner.

Obama Declares Bid Is ‘Within Reach’

Perception is reality.

Will the American people buy this “truth”?

No.