NBC: Obama fights back against 'cult-like' charges David Edwards and Muriel Kane

Published: Monday February 25, 2008



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Print This Email This Some of the news media have recently taken to describing Barack Obama's supporters as "cult-like" or comparing them to the fans of rock stars. Hillary Clinton has not been making these accusations herself, but she appears to reflect them when she charges that Obama is heavy on words and light on action. Even the Telegraph in Britain has picked up on the accusations, writing that "for a growing number of Barack Obama sceptics, there is something disturbing about the adulation with which the senator and Democratic presidential frontrunner is greeted as he campaigns for the White House  unnervingly akin to the hysteria of a cult, or the fervour of a religious revival." Obama is now starting to fight back against the "cult" description, and NBC's Lee Cowan reports from Toledo, OH that "there's a subtle new argument that Barack Obama's been using ... that's starting to get some traction." "He says it's not so much what Hillary Clinton says about him by way of criticism," Cowan explained, "but what she's implying about his supporters that he says should get them pretty riled up." Obama first introduced this argument at Tuesday's debate in Austin, where he stated, "The implication is, the people who've been voting for me or involved in my campaign are somehow delusional." Now his regular stump speach includes the same argument. "Some of these folks make fun of y'all," he told one audience. "They say, 'Y'all look at these folks who are are being duped.'" "However they're characterized, they are certainly energetic," Cowan concluded, seeming uncertain just what to make of Obama's supporters. "And the more they are criticized for that enthusiasm, the more it just seems to galvanize their cause." This video is from NBC's Nightly News, broadcast February 24, 2008.





