"I'm able, by means of a secret charm"

Please your honours," said he, "I'm able,
By means of a secret charm, to draw
All creatures living beneath the sun,
That creep or swim or fly or run,
After me so as you never saw!

Out came the children running.
All the little boys and girls,
With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls,
And sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls,
Tripping and skipping, ran merrily after
The wonderful music with shouting and laughter.

— Robert Browning's The Pied Piper of Hamelin (cover illustration by Kate Greenaway)

"To the movement conservatives in charge of McCain's campaign, and to the movement conservative that McCain himself has settled in to being, Obama is just the most recent leader of a series of children's crusades — spoiled children's crusades," writes Marty Kaplan at The Huffington Post, unwittinglyy stumbling onto the truth about that "Celeb ad of McCain's that we can't stop blogging about. Imagining himself a soothsaying satirist on a "Fantastic Voyage" inside the conservative mind, Kaplan recognizes in spite of himself that "Celeb" is not about Barack Obama at all. In fact, it's about the adolescent fantasies of his groupies amongst the citizenry and their fellow travelers in the media.

Just as that New Yorker cartoon cover of Barack and Michelle Obama as Islamist terrorist and 60s "revolutionary" was meant to be about the hysteria of extremist Obama critics, so "Celeb" is meant to be about the hysteria of extremist Obama advocates. Neither has anything to do with Obama per se, beyond his ability to inhabit the superstar role of what Virginial Postrel has called "the fresh young prince onto whom Democrats project their hopes and dreams."

Update: "Secret charms …and looking for innuendo in all the wrong places." Dr. Sanity's Carnival of the Insanities will drive you crazy.

Update II: Maggie's links.

Comments

[Laura Lee Donoho]

Kate Greenaway is one of my favorite childrens illustrators, along with Tasha Tudor. You do have to turn to literature to explain the Obama character. Hopefully it will help persuade people who think.

I posted a few days ago about the problem with conservatives who are looking back with longing at President Reagan and not looking forward to see what we face if Obama is elected.

Ending the very long post I referred to my favorite author, Jane Austen and compared her two main characters in Sense and Sensibility, the sisters, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. Elinor used her common sense when she spoke of her "esteem" for Mr. Edward Ferrars.

Marianne fell for John Willoughby without using her head.

He of course, broke her heart. I see Obama as a Willoughby. I just read an article by Maureen Dowd tonight comparing Obama to Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. Think she reads me?

[Gayle Miller]

Laura Lee - dare we credit poor Mo with that much good taste? Hmmm!

In any event, my take on this whole thing is that it isn't over just yet. Some of Bill Clinton's recent remarks have been not-so-veiled references that make one wonder, as when he opines something about being "Constitutionally qualified" for the presidency in one interview. There has been some mild internet buzz about the circumstances and locale of Senator Obama's birth.

Call me paranoid, but I'm wondering if the devil's own have some final ploy up their sleeves. Wouldn't surprise me.