How the internet created a hero

Has the internet accelerated the notion of hero worship? Obama and his platform of hope and change have ignited something in a great deal of the American population: the need for a leader to believe in, to look up to, almost to see as a king. Some think he’s going to change the world, and some think he’ll do it before he even gets in office. He started his campaign with a grassroots movement strongly supported by the internet. A conservative writer took on this topic:

Recently, members of mainstream entertainment industry also seem to have drank the Obama Kool-Aid. The “Yes We Can” video, which features the Black Eyed Peas’ Will.I.Am, Scarlett Johansson, and other celebrities chanting Obama’s New Hampshire primary speech, has popped up all over the internet. From the feigned emotion on these celebrities’ faces, one would think they were reading from the Bible or Shakespeare, not from a relatively well written but somewhat politically banal stump speech. Nonetheless, this nauseating video has now become the new symbol for Obama’s grassroots support.

The video the writer is referring to is below.

Personally, I don’t find it nauseating; I understand its method of inspiring and energizing a nation. McCain produced a lot of videos that created fear; videos like the one above were a welcome contradiction.

This second video on the other hand makes my point of hero worship more clearly.

The internet is the only medium that will support these kinds of videos. Mainstream media, even the liberal media, will simply not show something so blatant. CNN reports on America’s trend of aligning him to some other great leaders in history. He will be our Kennedy, our Roosevelt, our Lincoln, and our Clinton. Dangers exist in these constant comparisons. One is that incredibly high standards are already set for a man who has yet to take over the presidency, and another is that it puts an identity on him without letting him have his own. I hesitate to bring this to light; however, Lincoln and Kennedy were taken from us in their term and therefore practically deified. Few talk about the human characteristics of these men. I am not saying anything about Obama’s future, but I do think that America will see him become human and slightly imperfect at times. The internet reaches a huge mass of people in a short time, and if he starts to slip, even a little, the medium will carry the message far and wide.

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