Farewell to a Decade of Media Drooling Over Barack Obama

By Rich Noyes | January 9, 2017 | 8:52 AM EST

From the moment then-state senator Barack Obama showed up on the national stage to address the Democratic convention in 2004, the news media were in love. “Obama is a rock star,” NBC’s Andrea Mitchell exclaimed during MSNBC’s live convention coverage back on July 27, 2004. The next morning, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos echoed Mitchell’s enthusiasm: “He’s the Tiger Woods of the Democratic Party right now.”

When Obama ran for President four years later, news reporters led the cheers. “It’s almost hard to remain objective because it’s infectious, the energy, I think,” then-NBC reporter Lee Cowan confessed in an MSNBC.com video posted January 7, 2008. On CNN a few days later, Politico editor John Harris admitted: “A couple years ago, you would send a reporter out with Obama, and it was like they needed to go through detox when they came back — ‘Oh, he’s so impressive, he’s so charismatic,’ and we’re kind of like, ‘Down, boy.’”

As a candidate, the Associated Press celebrated Obama as “something special,” while as President-elect, the Washington Post drooled over his “chiseled pectorals,” on display during a vacation in Hawaii. As President, reporters touted his “prodigious talents,” his “amazing legislative agenda,” and his “huge achievements.” And as an individual, journalists fawned over Obama, calling him “one of our brightest presidents,” a “huge visionary,” “the perfect American,” “our national poet,” and “the most noble man who has ever lived in the White House.”

With the Democratic Party defeated, ObamaCare set for repeal, and incoming President Donald Trump poised to revoke a host of his executive orders, Obama’s actual legacy will likely fall far short of what his media fan club once imagined. But one aspect of his place in history seems secure: Barack Obama has been the lucky recipient of more biased, positive “news” media coverage than any other President in history.

Here are some examples from the past decade, starting with a video montage of the audio and video quotes detailed below:

“Obama seemed the political equivalent of a rainbow — a sudden preternatural event inspiring awe and ecstasy....He transcends the racial divide so effortlessly that it seems reasonable to expect that he can bridge all the other divisions — and answer all the impossible questions — plaguing American public life.”
— Time’s Joe Klein, October 23, 2006 cover story, “Why Barack Obama Could Be the Next President.”
 
“Many people, afterwards [after Obama’s 2004 convention speech], they weren’t sure how to pronounce your name but they were moved by you. People were crying. You tapped into something. You touched people....If your party says to you, ‘We need you,’ and, and there’s already a drumbeat out there, will you respond?”
— Co-host Meredith Vieira to Obama on NBC’s Today, October 19, 2006.

“You can see it in the crowds. The thrill, the hope. How they surge toward him. You’re looking at an American political phenomenon....He inspires the party faithful and many others, like no one else on the scene today....And the question you can sense on everyone’s mind, as they listen so intently to him, is he the one? Is Barack Obama the man, the black man, who could lead the Democrats back to the White House and maybe even unite the country?...Everywhere he goes, people want him to run for President, especially in Iowa, cradle of presidential contenders. Around here, they’re even naming babies after him.”
— Co-anchor Terry Moran on ABC’s Nightline, November 6, 2006.

Co-anchor Chris Matthews: “I have to tell you, you know, it’s part of reporting this case, this election, the feeling most people get when they hear Barack Obama’s speech. My — I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don’t have that too often.”Co-anchor Keith Olbermann: “Steady.”
Matthews: “No, seriously. It’s a dramatic event. He speaks about America in a way that has nothing to do with politics. It has to do with the feeling we have about our country. And that is an objective assessment.”
— Exchange during MSNBC’s coverage of the Virginia, Maryland, and Washington D.C. primaries, February 12, 2008.

“On the bus ride along the snowy road to Lebanon, New Hampshire, I showed him this week’s Newsweek, hot off the presses. [to Obama] How does this feel, of all the honors that have come your way, all the publicity?...Who does it make you think of? Is there, is there a loved one?”
— NBC’s Brian Williams on the January 7, 2008 Nightly News.

“Presidential campaigns have destroyed many bright and capable politicians. But there’s ample evidence that Obama is something special, a man who makes difficult tasks look easy, who seems to touch millions of diverse people with a message of hope that somehow doesn’t sound Pollyannaish.”
— AP writer Charles Babington in a May 10, 2008 dispatch.

“Some princes are born in palaces. Some are born in mangers. But a few are born in the imagination, out of scraps of history and hope....Barack Hussein Obama did not win because of the color of his skin. Nor did he win in spite of it. He won because at a very dangerous moment in the life of a still young country, more people than have ever spoken before came together to try to save it. And that was a victory all its own.”
— Time’s Nancy Gibbs in the November 17, 2008 post-election cover story.

“Between workouts during his Hawaii vacation this week, he was photographed looking like the paradigm of a new kind of presidential fitness, one geared less toward preventing heart attacks than winning swimsuit competitions. The sun glinted off chiseled pectorals sculpted during four weightlifting sessions each week, and a body toned by regular treadmill runs and basketball games.”
— Washington Post reporter Eli Saslow in a December 25, 2008 front-page story about Obama’s vacation fitness regimen.

“By now we are all accustomed to that Obi-Wan Kenobi calm....[But] what now seems most salient about Obama is the opposite of flashy, the antithesis of rhetoric: he gets things done. He is a man about his business — a Mr. Fix It going to Washington....Spare us the dead-or-alive bravado, the gates-of-hell bluster, the melodrama of the 3 a.m. phone call. A door swung open for a candidate who would merely stand and deliver....In the land of the hapless, the competent man is king.”
— Editor-at-large David von Drehle in his cover story announcing Obama as Time’s “Man of the Year,” December 29, 2008 issue.

“I like to say that, in some ways, Barack Obama is the first President since George Washington to be taking a step down into the Oval Office. I mean, from visionary leader of a giant movement, now he’s got an executive position that he has to perform in, in a way.”
— ABC News correspondent Terry Moran to Media Bistro’s Steve Krakauer in a February 20, 2009 “Morning Media Menu” podcast.

“The legislative achievements have been stupendous — the $789 billion stimulus bill, the budget plan that is still being hammered out (and may, ultimately, include the next landmark safety-net program, universal health insurance). There has also been a cascade of new policies to address the financial crisis — massive interventions in the housing and credit markets, a market-based plan to buy the toxic assets that many banks have on their books, a plan to bail out the auto industry and a strict new regulatory regime proposed for Wall Street. Obama has also completely overhauled foreign policy, from Cuba to Afghanistan. ‘In a way, Obama’s 100 days is even more dramatic than Roosevelt’s,’ says Elaine Kamarck of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. ‘Roosevelt only had to deal with a domestic crisis. Obama has had to overhaul foreign policy as well, including two wars. And that’s really the secret of why this has seemed so spectacular.’”
— Time’s Joe Klein in the magazine’s May 4, 2009 cover story on Barack Obama’s first 100 days as President.

http://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/rich-noyes/2017/01/09/farewell-decade-media-drooling-over-barack-obama

My comments: How ironic is the Media Praise for Obama in view of the fact that he is the Most Anti-Chrsit, Anti-American  President in the history of the Nation--A man against God and His Word. The man who came to Transform America into a godless, Socialist, Secular Humanist STATE. The man who Doubled the National Debt, thereby SPENDING the Furture of the next generation. An Immoral, Indecent man, who Forces boys into the girls shower and ,locker rooms and visa versa. Obama is a Prototype of The Antichrist, Deceiving one-half the Nation. The man who Arrogantly ignored the US Constitution with his Executive Orders.