The Man Who Fell To Earth

Going to the well once to often capsizes both dinosaur news magazines this month:

As we mentioned last week, Time magazine first Photoshopped then-President Elect Obama into the next Roosevelt for their biweekly cover story on The One late last November. Then for their Forth of July issue, Time put FDR himself on the cover to pontificate on what Obama could learn from his presidential career. But as I wrote on July 3rd, “If Obama Is FDR, What Can He Learn From Him?”

Similarly, Newsweek gives Obama an even bigger demotion: Last month, Evan Thomas declared him “standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God.” This week, as Ed Morrissey paraphrases with gusto, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend writes, “You know who’d make a great Pope?”

The parody Newsweek cover that National Review’s art department designed last month (and reproduced at left) is looking, if anything, understated these days. Obama’s no longer “Better than FDR”, he’s positively papal. I didn’t know Obama was Catholic; As someone who placed himself on styrofoam Olympus last year, I assumed he transcended earthly religious castes.

(In sharp contrast, Newsweek itself is calling for plenty of Old Testament-style wrath and smiting, as Don Surber notes.)

Related: “CNN gets flipped the blue crane.”

Related: The London Telegraph asks (and yes, I’m slightly paraphrasing as well), What Fresh Hell Is This, And Can Barack Obama Save Us From It?

Update: The Virginian deploys a bit of Kremlinology to ponder the aura of the penumbra of the “end of Obamania” in the legacy media.  (With the possible exception of Newsweek’s budding eschatologists, of course.)