The American Spectator

Among the Intellectualoids

False Messiah

By Christopher Orlet on 8.5.08 @ 12:07AM

I hadn't heard gushing like this since the Flood of '92 was lapping at my second-story windows. Only this time the gusher was not the Mighty Mississippi, but someone nearly as wide, i.e., the film director Rob Reiner (Misery, When Harry Met Sally, A Few Good Men) in an interview with the Politico. Asked how things might be different when Obama wins the presidency, Reiner gushed:

There'd be love and respect, but I think you'd have it even bigger than Clinton. With someone like Obama, I think the whole country, the whole world will coalesce. Every election is about change, and change takes a long time because there are big issues that can't be changed overnight. But the one thing that will change dramatically is how we're viewed around the world. Once Obama is in there, the world will view us in an entirely different light. And that, to me, is a good thing...

Conservative pundits have noted the Biblical, even apocalyptic imagery employed by Barack's supporters (which include the mainstream media). But their hyperbole is no mere literary device. They are true believers. "Once Barack is in" a Golden Age of Peace and Prosperity will descend upon the Earth, a period not unlike the Millennium when the messiah returns to rule for a thousand years, only Barack is supposed to step aside after eight. With Barack in charge the Earth will be transformed miraculously into a giant diversity job fair with above-minimum wage jobs a-plenty and free health care for all. What's more, war will cease. Conservatives will lie down with liberals. Muslims and Jews will spoon and pitch woo.

The language of the Obama cultist is even more over-the-top than anything the millenarians could conjure up. I mean, that bit about love and respect. Maybe the proper analogy is not to the Millennium, but to a rave where Barack is the new Ecstasy. Take him and you'll want to dance, hug total strangers and suck on little raspberry pacifiers. And it's not just America that will be saved by the coming of Barack. The whole "international community" can be -- no, make that will be born again. Indeed the entire "international community will "coalesce" and become one. Who needs multiculturalism and diversity anyway? Think of it, Pakistani and Indian, Palestinian and Israeli, Sudanese Arab and Darfuri will lay aside their differences. The scales will fall from their eyes. What were we ever fighting about? I don't remember! Silly! Have some pork? An Obamaburger? Don't mind if I do...

THAT'S ABOUT THE BEST we can expect from the 60s Generation, a cohort that preached -- and I do mean preached -- the gospel of no heaven, no borders, no possessions, and all the nonsense a former Beatle catalogued in that puerile and vacuous Hippie anthem "Imagine." Of course, not one of the boomers really believed that twaddle, but it was cool to pretend. Some are pretending still; to do otherwise would be to admit that your whole life was a sham.

Aging boomers, like Rob Reiner, must have been terribly disappointed when finally they got an authentic liberal, pot-smoking, sax-playing, Yale lawyer in the White House and, instead of changing the world, or the country, or even the federal government, he spent his term chasing interns around the Oval Office and hiding from his wife.

Meanwhile Reiner -- one of that wife's biggest supporters in the primaries -- insists that during an Obama administration America will be the beloved of all the world. Maybe not respected, but loved. No sooner than Barack takes the oath than the U.S. will transform from Great Satan, Imperial Bully, and Destroyer of the Planet to Big Lovable Lug. French shopkeepers will stop being rude to us. Venezuelans will pump us full of free oil, which, of course, we will not accept, since it is a non-renewable resource, and the Taliban will lay down their surface-to-air missiles and go home to their half dozen wives and two dozen children and tell wondrous tales of Obama.

If that were indeed the case I would be the first in line November 4 to rock the vote for Barack, even if it meant socialized medicine and an activist Supreme Court. You think I don't get tired of being snubbed by Frogs? Think I don't grow weary of seeing Old Glory burned and trampled in the dirt streets of Palestine? Then again, Mr. Reiner might consider actually talking to a foreigner or two. At the very least he could read David Aaronovitch in the Times of London, who acknowledges that Obama -- sweetness and light though he is -- is still an American, therefore eventually the rest of the world will hate him too:

[T]here isn't an American president since Eisenhower who hasn't ended up, at some point or other, being depicted by the world's cartoonists as a cowboy astride a phallic missile. It happened to Bill Clinton when he bombed Iraq; it will happen to Mr Obama when his reinforced forces in Afghanistan or Pakistan mistake a meeting of tribal elders for an unwise gathering of Taleban and al-Qaeda. Then the new president...will be the target of that mandarin Anglo-French conceit that our superior colonialism somehow gives us the standing to critique the Yank's naive and inferior imperialism.

Maybe it's time Meathead took that long overdue trip outside of the Never-Neverland of Tinseltown. He seems unable to differentiate between actors and real people, fictional tales and actual human behavior. If Obama wins in November it will be by the narrowest of margins. The nation will remain split down the middle. The new president's attempts to socialize large swaths of society will not generate love and respect, but an outraged backlash from conservatives and libertarians. Still, it is always great fun to read interviews with Hollywood leftists. For some unfathomable reason Americans like to hear what they have to say. And as entertainment it is certainly preferable to their films.

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Health Care, Bill Clinton, Mainstream Media, Hollywood, Law, Supreme Court, Iraq, Israel, Pakistan, Oil