Obamamania

James Taranto at The Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web Today reports on two views of Obamamania (you'll probably have to click on "previous day" to see it). Slate's Tim Noah has begun a new feature, "the Obama Messiah Watch,"which will collect examples of fawning coverage of Obama in the media, like this, from the Los Angeles Times:

In [political science professor Roger] Boesche's European politics class, [classmate Ken] Sulzer said he was impressed at how few notes [italics {Noah's}] Obama took. "Where I had five pages, Barry had probably a paragraph of the pithiest, tightest prose you'd ever see. . . .

But Ann Althouse looks beyond the humor:

But what Noah fails to talk about is the likelihood that he's picking up evidence of racism. What accounts for amazement to the point of adoration at the fact that a man possesses excellent skill at something like note taking? Is it not that he can do it and he's black?

I think we've all heard this very subtle form of racism. I heard an example of it on the "Bob and Tom" radio show a couple of weeks ago. They'd just gotten through talking with a black comedian, and one of them praised him for being "so articulate." The "for a black man" wasn't expressed, but how else are we to take such a statement? I've heard them talk with scores of white comedians, not a one of them singled out for being able to talk good English.

And such statements, probably with a lot of feelings white guilt behind them, come from people who would be horrified to think they sound racist. I wonder how much of the Obama Messiah phenomenon is because of people trying to purge that guilt. That's a fine thing to do, but it's a lousy reason to pick a president.