Hugh Hewitt has a good post this morning on Obama's "bitterness" comments:

Obama doesn't understand a great deal of America. He has no experience with it other than as a politician looking for votes, and even that experience outside of Chicago has been accumulated only since he began his run for the U.S. Senate in 2003. His life has made him keenly aware of urban dysfunction and of African-American issues even as it has exposed him to the Third World in a way that very few American officials have been.

But he is blind to what makes most American communities work. His family experiences and his work experiences have never immersed him in the majority of America that not only functions but indeed thrives. His projection on to that America of his own beliefs -- that odd mix of the beliefs assembled during his very unusual childhood, in Hawaii's most privileged school, on Chicago's south side, and at Columbia and Harvard Law School and Trinity's congregation-- has opened a lot of eyes to just how different Obama's vision of America is.

The more I hear Obama talk, the more I believe that he sees the state as the true provider of spiritual fulfillment for individuals. After all, if people weren't embittered by failures of government, they wouldn't have to turn to guns or God or anything else to fill that spiritual void. It's a pretty sad vision in the end, and one I hope enough of America isn't dumb enough to buy into.

More: Ace is a bit more negative in tone, but right on in analysis:

His remarks were indefensible and unspinnable, which is why the media is in such a rush to 1) claim that the only dispute is over "bitter" and 2) end discussion on the flare-up entirely.

Even his liberal defenders cannot agree on an actual defense -- they alternate (sometimes in the same sentence) between claiming that of course Obama could not have intended to say such an offensive and condescending thing, and also that he was 100% right to say such an offensive and condescending thing -- hey, it's just a fact that hicks vote on guns, God, and racism because they don't have enough money to rise above their petty resentments and childish faiths!

The more I read about Barack Obama's campaign, the more, well, creepy it seems...

• By Obama We Were Saved
• "we need a leader who is going to touch our souls, because the truth is, our souls are broken"
• "heal America and change the world"
• Oh, Obamaaaaaa!
• Obama's First Coming
• And Obama Wept
• Reanimating Camelot's Corpse

For all the talk that the left likes to engage in about how conservative Christians are trying to impose a theocracy and how fearful they are of such a (ridiculously remote) possibility, once they figure out that they need religious voters to take them seriously in order to win elections they go and nominate a candidate who appears to think that he's Jesus Christ.



More: a downright creepy op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal today:

But this collective cathexis that created Obamamania is obviously a deep desire for authenticity, and he is the natural repository of our hidden hopes.

Mr. Obama is what the future looks like: a biracial child of divorce, schlepped halfway around the world by a conscientious but confounded single mother, abandoned by a wayward but winning Kenyan father, international but somehow still all-American, a party-hardy Harvard Law graduate. That is, an ordinary extraordinary guy, the dreamiest of all our dreams. If only every kid from a broken home could turn out to be such a fine gentleman! How can we not love him? With a million other things he could be doing, Mr. Obama actually wants to lead us. Us? What did we do to deserve him?

Goodness! And this from the author of Prozac Nation, who seems to need Lithium more than an antidepressant...