Gen Y Leader Worship
1. Do you remember a Gen Y expert bragging that Obama was the candidate of Gen Y?
2. Do you remember a Gen Y expert bragging that Baby Boomers are authoritarian but Gen Y isn't?
3. Have you noticed the complaints about messianism in Obama's campaign?
4. Tell me, what does that mean about Gen Y?
"My father offered an interesting perspective.... he said that Baby Boomers look for super-human leaders. They believe one person has all the answers and he can lead single-handedly.
"We certainly don’t believe our leaders are more than human. Just look at our childhoods. We watched high profile leaders cheat on their wives, embezzle money and refuse to take responsibility for terrible decisions."
-- Gen Y Expert
Question: Are Baby Boomers authoritarian? Yes or No?
Born 1979: Yes.
Question: Do you believe that Baby Boomers look to one super leader who has all of the answers? Kind of like Nazis.
Born 1979: Uh, Yes. It's a stereotype but Yes.
-- Gen Y Quiz (July 02, 2008)
'It was basically all the students caucusing for Obama and the adults dispersing among the other candidates.' In the end, in his Iowa City precinct, the students sat victorious at the Obama camp with 70% of the votes.... This is a metaphor for the workplace.... Baby boomers are being forced out, in a non-disruptive way."
-- Gen Y Expert
"Obama's high-flown, inspirational rhetoric often feeds into the impression of a political campaign veering into the realms of religion - never more so than when he declared in a victory speech that "we are the ones we've been waiting for."
"The line is the title of a 2006 Alice Walker book, but some saw it as another sign of the emerging Cult of Obama.
"Obamaphilia has gotten creepy," wrote a pro-Obama Los Angeles Times columnist, Joel Stein. "The best we Obamaphiles can do is to refrain from embarrassing ourselves."
-- Daily News
"Something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism"
-- Joe Klein, Time Magazine
"At no fewer than six of Mr Obama's recent rallies, young enthusiasts have been so overcome with excitement that they have fainted in front of the stage.
"Indeed, fainting has become so common that a team of medical volunteers is ordered to be on hand to treat the victims, and Mr Obama has interrupted his own speeches to give his followers a blow by blow commentary of their recovery."
"Dr Sean Wilentz, a Princeton historian and stern critic of the current administration of George W.Bush, said: "What's troubling about the campaign is that it's gone beyond hope and change to redemption."
"At the campaign's "Camp Obama" - a training programme run ahead of primaries in key states - volunteers are schooled to avoid talking to voters about policy, and instead tell of how they "came" to Obama, just as born-again Christians talk about "coming to Jesus."
New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote: "Obama's people are so taken with their messiah that soon they'll be selling flowers at airports and arranging mass weddings."
-- The Telegraph
Final Question:
Did the Baby Boomers have a messianic candidate? If so, was it Richard Nixon who won 49 states in '72? Or was it Bobby Kennedy in '68? Or was it nobody?
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