Broadcast veteran Barbara Walters has finally admitted what many news watchers have thought about people in the media and their adoration of Barack Obama.
“We thought that he was going to be – I shouldn’t say this at Christmastime – but the next messiah,” Walters told CNN’s Piers Morgan Tuesday night.
The response came after Morgan asked the co-host of “The View” why Obama has faced so much opposition, and “Why is he struggling so much to really fulfill the great flame of ambition and excitement that he was elected on originally in 2009?”
“He made so many promises,” she explained, then making the messiah comment.
“And the whole Obamacare, or whatever you want to call it, that Affordable Health Act, it just hasn’t worked for him, and he’s stumbled around on it, and people feel very disappointed because they expected more.”
She added: “It’s very difficult when the expectations for you are very high. You’re almost better off when they are low and then they rise and rise. His were very high and they’ve dropped. But you know? He still has several years to go. What does he have, three years more, Piers? And, you know, there will be a lot of changes, one thinks in that time.”
Radio host Rush Limbaugh couldn’t help but weigh in on Walters’ messianic view of Obama.
“This is how the left promoted Obama. It’s how he promoted himself, and it’s how a lot of voters saw him,” Limbaugh explained Wednesday on his national program.
“Believe me, she’s a believer. She’s not mocking or laughing at this. … If she were mocking it, she wouldn’t have paused and begged for understanding at Christmastime.”
“Who in their right mind would put this much on any politician?” he continued. “She’s not uncommon here … among people in the media. It’s all rooted in race and sympathy. It’s all related to surface things. … It was all blind faith.”
Limbaugh said Americans shouldn’t doubt “that these sycophants in the media that bought hook, line and sinker this messiah business” actually considered Obama their political savior.
“He was the messiah,” he noted. “He had come to save them, to absolve them, to once again assert them upon the pedestals of power. That’s exactly how they saw him.”
Walters is just the latest media star to wax biblical when it comes to perception of the president.
As WND reported this month, MSNBC “Hardball” host Chris Matthews sounded somewhat scriptural when he described Obama coming to the MSNBC studios to do an interview with him.
President Obama and MSNBC
Matthews gleefully told his reporter colleagues after the interview: “He came amongst us.”
In 2008, Matthews said of Obama: “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.”
Thursday night, liberal pundits Howard Fineman of the Huffington Post and David Corn of Mother Jones joined Matthews for a post-interview analysis.
Fineman noted the president appeared to be “dealing with complexities” of government and said, “Change you can believe in, but making change happen is hard.”
Corn said he “saw a president who remains frustrated with the political media culture that he has to work within and that he’s looking to rally people, students, reporters, people within the media.”
“David Corn, you skeptic, he came to us today. He came amongst us,” Matthews replied.
Corn responded that Obama is “trying to rally people behind this vision that he’s promoting for a couple years.”
Columnist Mary Katharine Ham got right to the point of Matthews’ reaction to Obama.
“And, lo, the president came upon them, and the glory of the president shone round about them: and they were sore afraid,” she wrote, satirizing on the story of the birth of Jesus in the New Testament.
Matthews, before the interview, had been giddy, saying he got “Christmas Eve excitement” about the interview.
Messianic references to Obama seem to be multiplying of late. It was just days ago when WND reported a new lesson plan for American school students, offered on an open marketplace for educators, was suggesting such a reference.
The lesson, created by Sherece Bennett, is based on the book “Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope” by Nikki Grimes.
Kyle Olson reported the plan on his Education Action Group website, commenting that it casts Obama “in a messianic light. Literally.”
In one passage, Olson points out, a young Obama sees beggars and wonders, “Will I ever be able to help people like these?’”
“Hope hung deep inside of him,” the book says.
Olson quotes another section: “Before dawn each morning, Barry rose – his mother’s voice driving him from dream land. ‘Time for learning English grammar and the Golden Rule. Be honest, be kind, be fair,’ she taught him.”
The lesson even uses biblical references to describe Obama, explaining how he changed his name from Barry.
“One morning, he slipped on the name he’d been born with. The name of his father, Barack. For the first time in his life, he wore it proudly – like a coat of many colors.”
“Uh oh,” wrote Olson, “Another Obama-inspired biblical reference in a government school!
“But there’s no controversy here. Leftists will use God and the Bible, in instances such as these, when it appropriately fits their propaganda purposes.”
WND reported over the Obama White House tenure on the widespread veneration of Obama since his 2008 campaign.
Explained talk radio host Rush Limbaugh at one time: “They happen to think Obama is the end of the world, but in a great way, he’s it. There’s nothing better, Obama is the messiah. People still have that kind of affection for him.”
Earlier, in a WND column, Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson wrote: “President Barack Obama is the most divisive man to ever occupy the White House – period! Yet, 95 percent of black Americans worship him as if he’s the messiah. Why?”
He noted Hollywood personality Jamie Foxx’s comment at the Soul Train Awards: “Thank God, and our lord and savior, Barack Obama!”
Peterson continued: “Most black preachers and leaders secretly agree with Jamie Foxx, which is why there was no outcry from these people. Never mind that Obama stands for everything that is godless, i.e.: unfettered abortions, class warfare, amnesty for illegals, legalizing same-sex marriage, revoking DADT (weakening the U.S. Armed Forces) and lack of resolve in his support for Israel.”
WND reported when an observant reporter at a Democratic National Convention came across a shocking bit of “kitsch” for sale that seemed to suggest God so loved the world, He sent us Barack Obama.
“The Cult of Obama staggers on,” wrote David Weigel of Slate.com. “The streets near the convention zone are dotted with vendors selling for-us-by-us Obama merch [sic].”
Among the available merchandise, Weigel came across a photo calendar attributed to James Hickman and offered by a man who reportedly claimed to be Hickman’s nephew.
Most of the calendar’s months are filled with complimentary photos of Obama and factoids about the history of black Americans. But for the August entry — the month of Obama’s birth — the photo features the short-form birth certificate originally purported to be Obama’s and the words, “Heaven Sent: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life – John 3:16.”
The calendar page, with Obama’s purported birth certificate and a separate photo of sunlight streaming on the sitting president’s profile, seems to suggest the “heaven sent” one is not Jesus, but Obama.
And as WND has reported, the adoration of Obama has often strayed into near deification.
“Obama is, of course, greater than Jesus,” the Dutch newspaper Politiken opined in 2009.
 |
The editorial, written on the occasion of a legislative vote in favor of Obama’s plan for a health care takeover by the government, asserted “the right of every American not to be financially shipwrecked when their health fails” as well as the “biggest ever financial support package in America’s history, a major disarmament agreement and the quickest-ever re-establishment of American reputation.”
“On the other hand, we have Jesus’ miracles that everyone still remembers, but which only benefited a few. At the same time, we have the wonderful parables about his life and deeds that we know from the New Testament, but which have been interpreted so differently over the past 2000 years that it is impossible to give an unequivocal result of his work,” the newspaper said.
Then there was British recording artist Sting’s suggestion that Obama could be the divine answer to the world’s problems.
“In many ways, he’s sent from God, because the world’s a mess,” he said in interview with the Associated Press.
Earlier, it was an associate editor at a college newspaper who wrote, “Obama is my Jesus.”
Maggie Mertens, the associate editor at the campus paper at Massachusetts’ Smith College, said: “Obama is my homeboy. And I’m not saying that because he’s black – I’m saying that in reference to those Urban Outfitters T-shirts from a couple years ago that said, ‘Jesus is my homeboy.’ Yes, I just said it. Obama is my Jesus.”
Her confession came in the Smithsophian’s commentary section under the headline: “I Will Follow Him: Obama As My Personal Jesus.”
“While you may be overtly religious and find this to be idol-worshiping, or may be overtly politically correct and just know that everything in that sentence could be found offensive, I’m afraid it’s true anyway,” she wrote.
 “The Truth” by Michael D’Antuono |
Also, an artist who planned to unveil a portrait of Obama in a Christ-like pose with a crown of thorns upon his brow canceled the event due to “overwhelming public outrage.”
Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, meanwhile, declared when Obama talks, “the messiah is absolutely speaking.”
During Obama’s 2008 campaign, a website called “Is Barack Obama the Messiah?” captured the wave of euphoria that followed the Democratic senator’s remarkable rise.
The site featured WND’s on-site coverage of an Obama campaign rally in Seattle that captured the overwhelming adoration of his followers, who witnessed the candidate toss a bottle of water to a woman who had fainted and order the masses to part so she could receive care.
The messiah website was topped by an Obama quote strategically ripped from a Jan. 7, 2008, speech at Dartmouth College just before the New Hampshire Primary in which he told students: “A light will shine through that window, a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany, and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote” for Obama.
The site included this:
OBAMA BE THY NAME
THY CHANGE WILL COME
THY WILL BE DONE …
