When Barack Obama defeated Hillary Clinton and then John McCain on his way to the White House, the losing camps sounded a similar theme. Obama, of course, had to
red have had the media on his side.
How else could someone explain the stranger-than-fiction odyssey of an African-American native of Hawaii, who rose from anonymity to serve in the Illinois state senate, get crushed in a run for Congress in Chicago -- and then remarkably capture a U.S. Senate seat. As a bad flack might pant, you can't make this stuff up!
David Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker and author of "The Bridge," a biography of Barack Obama, won't subscribe to the notion that the presidential hopeful won simply because there was a wave of media hysteria. He doesn't buy into the widely held theory that star-struck reporters and editors deliberately overlooked his flaws and worked hard to present Obama as both an Everyman and a Messiah.
Remnick concedes that there were "levels of good fortune" on Obama's side during his campaigns. John McCain, for example, had to answer for the nation's economic problems at the worst possible time for his party -- smack in the autumn of 2008.
But Remnick dismisses the conventional wisdom as being overly simplistic.
"I think his victories were pretty astonishing but I don't think it's media bias," said Remnick. "The Bridge," which was published a few months ago, explains well how race played a central part of Obama's rise and helped greatly to form his persona and view of the world.
Remnick believes Obama's underdog status as a relatively untested, African-American candidate, added to his mystique.
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