Is Obama the Messiah? Posted by Shadi Hamid

Friend 1: Obama's the great black hope
Me: He's the great white hope
Friend 2: Well, I think he's the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Friends and I ponder the possiblity.

Friend 1: Well (pause), if Jesus ever did come back, I don't think it would be far off to think that he'd be sort of like Barack Obama...

We probably weren't the first ones to wonder and, now, there's reason to think we won't be the last...there's a new Slate feature called "the Obama Messiah Watch" - introducing a periodic feature considering evidence that Obama is the son of God. You gotta love their first entry from the LA Times:

In [political science professor Roger] Boesche's European politics class, [classmate Ken] Sulzer said he was impressed at how few notes [italics mine] Obama took. "Where I had five pages, Barry had probably a paragraph of the pithiest, tightest prose you'd ever see. … It was very short, very sweet. Obviously somebody almost Clintonesque in being able to sum a whole lot of concepts and place them into a succinct written style."

Comments

[Don Bacon]

Hey, the Rapture Index is high at 161, why not an opening for Senator Slither?

http://www.raptureready.com/rap2.html

[12IL]

I have read your post 3 times and I still can't find any redeeming value to it.

1) Comparing any presidential candidate to god is just weird.
2) Putting it on this site assumes that such a comment would contribute in some way to a greater understanding of the issues, which really, it doesn't.
3) I really think you and your friends need a hobby.

[Shadi Hamid]

12IL, what could be more important and pressing than figuring out whether Jesus has made his presence known through the personhood of Mr. Obama? I don't know about you, but I'd kind of like it if our next President had God on his/her side. Then we might actually win the war on terror.

[Dan Kervick]

This is petty. If you feel the need to mock Obama, then do it on the basis of some position he has taken with which you disagree, a substantive error he has made, or a perceived character flaw.

I missed the effusive, messiah-like elements of the LA times snippet that Slate cites. It seems to me like a fairly typical story of the kind we often read during political campaigns, where old friends testify to the candidate's many virtues. The only moral to this one is that Obama was seen by his friend as a bright student with a gift for conscision and synthesis.

My 16 year old son, who likes and reads a bit about Obama, came home from his last ski team race and said that his right-wing friend Kelly was dishing Obama on the bus trip home:

"Kelly said that people only like Obama because he's black and handsome," he said.

"What did you say to that," I replied.

"I said, well yeah, and the fact that he was the editor of the Harvard Law Review."

Why are so many liberals playing into the snide winger whisper campaign that Obama is not really an extremely capable and intelligent fellow, but is only some sort of great black hope, affirmative action baby, or superstitiously worshipped, charismatic messiah figure?

[Barry Miller]

Is Obama the Messiah?
Well if his image shows up on a tortilla and is sold on ebay for a fortune.... Then Jesus is back. Thats an idea .... I'm off to buy tortillas.

[Don Bacon]

Shadi, the "war on terror" is a farce in the manner of "the war on drugs." You are in much greater risk of injury from a bath-tub slip than you are from a terrorist, to say nothing of cancer, diabetes, heart disease auto accident or lightning strikes. There is essentially no risk. The GWOT is designed to increase domestic oppression and corporate profits through military aggression, and you have bought into it. Listening to too many (or any) George Bush speeches, no doubt.

Actually, I'm the second son of God--I'm revealing it here first. Obama is third.

[Shadi Hamid]

Dan, you seem to consistently misread my posts. I'm actually a big fan of Obama's, as evidenced by my defense of him last week here on Democracy Arsenal. My post was not negative and, in rereading it, I can't understand how anyone would interpret it as such. It was a harmless, tongue-in-cheek, quarter-serious post that was supposed to be an amusing reflection - nothing more, and nothing less. With that said, there was a point to the post. I was making an anthropological observation about a particular phenomenon.

[Dan Kervick]

Guess I got it wrong Shadi. Seemed to me like you were joining in the fun.

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