The hula hoop, fifty years later
This is the 50th anniversary of the hula hoop fad that swept America in 1958. We seem to have a new version of the same phenomenon today in the Obama craze that has gripped the media and a good chunk of the populace. John Dickerson, Mark Steyn, and Tom Maguire contribute a few more stories and quips in the Ehrenreich genre of ethereal unreality about America’s current instant messiah, King of Kings, and Man of Steel who will save the planet with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men:
Barack Obama just seems to get cooler and cooler. He’s the most popular topic on the New York Times topics page…Internet widgets allow you to see what great thing Barack Obama has done for you…on the New York subway Friday morning, one of our copy editors…heard one woman joke to another: “Obama, will you pick me up after my noninvasive minor surgical procedure?” To which the other replied: “Obama, will you hold my hair back when I puke?”…
John Lewis, the venerable civil rights hero and congressman, put words to this feeling recently. “In recent days, there is a sense of movement and a sense of spirit,” he said, suggesting that he might switch his superdelegate vote from Hillary Clinton to Obama. “Something is happening in America and people are prepared and ready to make that great leap.”…On Facebook, people write about dreams featuring Obama. There is only one correct reaction to the will.i.am “Yes We Can” video and that is to start chanting along…
There was the woman in New Hampshire who compared him with Christ. There was Maria Shriver’s comparison of the candidate with the state of California, with the rhetorical fervor usually seen only after a preacher shouts, “You are healed!”…
“Obama’s finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don’t even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence, and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair.”…
“Be not afraid; for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all the people: for there is born to you this day in the city of Chicago a Savior, who is Barack the Democrat.”
Questions: (a) the 1958 hula hoop craze lasted two years — how long will this one last? (b) if today’s fad politician is the hula hoop, who will be the frisbee (the second fad invented by Wham-O in the late fifties)? (c) and finally, what’s the deal with all the women who faint at the Senator’s rallies and rather disturbing revival meetings — is it real or is it something else entirely? (The list of these suspicious fainting spells seems to be getting longer and longer.)