ON THE MEDIA — Newspaper people are an odd, conflicted sort.
They desperately love to be where the action is. They crave the chance to identify a new phenomenon. Then they race to be first to reverse direction -- declaring the new and different hopelessly overblown, or just more of the same old thing.
Into this ingrained set of collective impulses rushes the story of Barack Obama, who will be the first African American president, and Howard Kurtz, who is the Washington Post media columnist and (perhaps) first to declare fervor over Obama's election overblown.
"Media outlets have always tried to make a few bucks on the next big thing," Kurtz wrote this week. "But we seem to have crossed a cultural line into mythmaking."
Given, Kurtz has compiled an impressive list of effusive headlines, hyperbolic Obama-jargon ("Generation O" and "Obamaism") and cultural candy corn -- new songs by Jay-Z and will.i.am and Obama Girl's frothy, flirty YouTube video "I've Got a Crush on Obama."
Indeed, we have been, and will be, treated to an entire oeuvre devoted to Michelle O's slammin' wardrobe (OK, excluding that election-night mistake) and serialization of the nationwide search for the hypoallergenic First Puppy.
Writing a little breathlessly about all the breathless coverage, Kurtz asks: "Are journalists fostering the notion that Obama is invincible, the leader of what the New York Times dubbed 'Generation O'?"
Not exactly. That suggestion willfully ignores a lot that papers are writing. On front pages, you can find Obama stories with a decidedly different theme that amounts to this: Man, did this guy ever put himself in the middle of a big fat mess, and how's he going to get himself, and this country, out of it?
Besides writing about Generation O, the New York Times wrote within days of Obama's victory about the many promises the candidate made and the many high hurdles the president would have to clear to fulfill them.
The story raised the prospect that the president-elect might: find it "extremely challenging" to pay for promised early-childhood education; struggle to find the savings he promised to pay for health insurance for the uninsured, who number 45 million; face a reversal of gains in Iraqi security if he followed through on his promise to withdraw troops in 16 months.
Many other cautionary stories have filled the media in recent days.
