The new oohing

Howard Kurtz is really documenting two different phenomena. The first is the crass merchandising of Obamaphoria by theoretically otherwise neutral media. Big surprise. But as I said last week, all these companies already made a lot of money off an election that people loved to love.

UPDATE: Amanda found lots of other people trying to make money. Especially amusing are the pseudo Cabbage Patch dolls, but more significant in the inauguration as rock concert meme.

The second issue is the oohing and aahing; and I confess that, watching the Os last night on 60 Minutes, it was difficult to know what to do about that. Because some of it seems warranted. I mean, they really are smart and personable and attractive and admorable. How do you not say tha.t?

Live-blogging Barack Obama on 60 Minutes

He evoked FDR with a version of "I see one third of a nation ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed"

"We go from shock to trance," about gas. That's a nice turn of phrase.

"America doesn't torture. And I'm going to make sure we don't torture." Somewhere Andrew Sullivan is smiling.

At a media studies level he's sort of interesting in the way he can hold a close-up. He's really interesting with NO ornamentation.

In (correctly) rejecting specific New Deal parallels, he's also rejecting the Time magazine cover that makes him look like FDR.

Michelle Obama ... has anybody EVER been so ready for this crazy, impossible job? And the aspirations for normality and domesticity -- they really are the Huxtables. Except that the Huxtables were always at home, right? These people are so good at this!! A First Family that might take some interest in the D.C. schools? And the problems of that city?

He can't go to the barbershop. A slice of African-American life we understand. We've seen the movie.

UPDATE: Here is Rich's take on 60 Min. I agree that Kroft seems like a comfortable match for the Os, which is interesting, given the fact that he was an unsatisfactory interviewer of the Eagles.
Maybe that's part of Kroft's style -- he's a mirrorer, rather than a digger.
Rich is right -- the choice of 60 Minutes kind of reaffirms its status. The media revolution of 2008 turns out -- like many other revolutions -- to be somewhat conservative in nature. Huffington Post is NOT more important. Yet. The code of 60 Minutes? Grown-ups!
He's also right that Obama has marketed himself, yet again, as the guy who puts the pin back in every grenade. That's part of the code, the brand. If he can figure out how to do it, he'll give an exclusive interview, by June of 2009, to Limbaugh or Hanity or O'Reilly or the Weekly Standard or the National Review.

UPDATE: I think Courtney gets at something really interesting, really McLuhanesque, right here. He really is somebody that people wanna look at. He's not only ready for his close up. He's ready for his HD close-up. In all the way Bill Clinton was ready for 1992 but not for 2008, Obama seems almost designed right into this moment.