Wesley Pruden and the Obama-as-cult-leader meme

Of all the "conceptual scoop" stories from this past election cycle, none offended me more than the Obama-as-cult-leader meme.

Does it ring a bell?

If you recall, this narrative reached its zenith in February, when a slew of conservative and pro-Hillary columnists scrambled to frame Obama's popularity in negative terms. Faced with a candidate adored by millions, a candidate who inspired apathetic young people to become politically engaged, a candidate surging in the national polls against Hillary Clinton, these writers attempted the seemingly impossible: to use Obama's popularity against him.

In a 20-day span, stories exploiting the "cult meme" appeared in:

New York Times (Krugman)
New York Sun (Skenazy)
Washington Post (Krauthammer)
Los Angeles Times (Stein)
Boston Herald (Fitzgerald)
Politico (Lerer)
ABC News (Tapper)
Time (Klein)
Washington Times (Pruden)

This post focuses on that final name, Wesley Pruden. He's the editor emeritus of the Washington Times, a conservative daily with a circulation of about 93,775. Pruden has written a twice-weekly column titled "Pruden on Politics" for the Times since 1993.

From the Iowa caucuses on January 3 to Election Day on November 4, 2008, Pruden published 86 columns in the Washington Times, 84 of which mentioned Barack Obama, according to my search on LexisNexis. I read every single one of these columns -- don't ask me why -- and I can safely say that Wesley Pruden was one of the most ardent advocates of the Obama-as-cult-leader meme.

Here are the numbers:

• Number of stories in which Obama supporters are described as members of a "cult": 7.
• Number of references to Obama as "the Anointed One": 7.
  
• Number of references to Obama supporters as "glassy-eyed": 10.
• Number of references to Obama as "the American Idol": 11.
  
• Number of references to Obama as a "messiah": 16.
  

And this is just a taste. There are countless, less enumerable examples. On July 15, for example, Pruden previewed Obama's Germany address by writing "Soon Obama is off to Berlin in pursuit of a Leni Riefenstahl to duplicate spectacle when he stands before the Brandenburg Gate." Riefenstahl, of course, was Adolf Hitler's propagandist. There's a lot of user-made bullshit online comparing Obama to Hitler (I thought about embedding a YouTube video, but I didn't want to up the view count. Feel free to Google the two men's names for a torrent of Photoshopped images and the like), but for a veteran editor and journalist to use the hateful comparison is astounding.

In his very last column before Election Day, Pruden went all out with an extended comparison between Obama and the Pied Piper. The comparison, he wrote, lied in both men's ability "to identify with children." Obama, thus, sends us impressionable young people into a trance, like the mythical Pied Piper. He elsewhere referred condescendingly to Obama supporters as "robots" and "crazies" who're duped into submission by their "orator Prince."

So what was the harm in all of this? Why have I spent so much time detailing Pruden's attempts to frame Obama as a cult leader and his supporters as cultists?

I have two reasons.

First, I believe writers like Pruden created an environment for this line of attack:



Pruden even linked Obama to Paris Hilton and Brittany Spears a full six months before John McCain's campaign.

Second, and more importantly, I found the Obama-as-cult-leader meme shockingly offensive. I worked as a new media intern for Obama's campaign in Iowa. I met dozens of young Obama supporters, college kids who took semesters off to work for the senator. According to Pruden and other right-wing columnists, we were a group of Kool-Aid-drinking drones. We worshipped Obama as though he were "born in a stable in Bethlehem," as though we were an impressionable mass of Obama Youth.

I can understand wanting to tear down a political opponent, but this line of attack was downright socially irresponsible. We are a country marked by low voter turnout among young people, no one can deny that. My generation, prior to this election, was defined by its apathy. So it is inexcusible for Pruden and other conservatives to have framed young political activism as fanatical and cult-like; their words did nothing but make apathy more appealing to people my age. Plenty of kids I knew internalized the Obama-as-cult-leader meme during this election -- some even cited it to justify their political detachment.

Pruden, more so than any mainstream writer I've come across, pushed this message mercilessly, week after week. Along with every other writer who propelled this opportunistic, destructive attack, he ought to be ashamed of himself.