Obama-Fawning Over at the WaPo - Tom Shales Rhapsodic Over Obama Speech

Change font size:  A |  A

As Tim Graham mentioned earlier, Washington Post Style-page columnist/TV critic Tom Shales went completely rhapsodic over President Obama's speech last night.  It's a bizzaro read, actually.  Starting with the headline, "Obama's Enchanting Quizfest" and continuing with descriptors like "earnestly," "disarmingly," "enchantingly" (again), "comfortingly cool and collected," "truly flabbergasting" (in a good way, pretty sure he means), and so on.  Shales even compares Obama to a comic-book hero.  The level of abject fawning and slobbering on the part of Shales is itself truly flabbergasting (in not a good way, I mean).  What possessed him to lose sense of appropriate professional tone in covering an elected official?  Fine, you think the man is doing a great job in office.  But as a journalist, why write it that way?  Especially in the wake of Obama's massive government expansion and take-over of the US economy, Shales really does a disservice to WaPo readers by abandoning a more balanced, detached and critical write-up of the Obama 100-day presser.