Their political cheerleading was derided by many. Their in-your-face swooning over The Chosen One made many of us sick, but did the job on November 4th. And now it appears they’re attempting to cash in on their “giddy” political promotion of Barack Obama.
Perhaps it was the announcement that NBC News is coming out with a DVD titled “Yes We Can: The Barack Obama Story.” Or that ABC and USA Today are rushing out a book on the election. Or that HBO has snapped up a documentary on Obama’s campaign.
Perhaps it was the Newsweek commemorative issue — “Obama’s American Dream” — filled with so many iconic images and such stirring prose that it could have been campaign literature. Or the Time cover depicting Obama as FDR, complete with jaunty cigarette holder.
Are the media capable of merchandizing the moment, packaging a president-elect for profit? Yes, they are.
So did the media jump on the Obama bandwagon because it was a bonafide news story, or did they decide that a black president was a potential moneymaker, thus their coverage was nothing but an 18-month infomercial?
None of that will save the alphabet media from going the way of the passenger pigeon.
That’s an unfair comparison; passenger pigeons were extremely useful.