My thesaurus lists the following as being similar to "obsequious":

servile, sycophantic, flattering, toadying, submissive, fawning, compliant, deferential, reverential, groveling, unctuous, smarmy

Somehow none of those are strong enough for this. Evan Thomas, editor of Newsweek, said:

I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God.

How in hell can a professional journalist say such a thing with a straight face? Doesn't that kind of brown-nosing set off any alarm bells in his mind? I thought that detachment and neutrality were supposed to be ideal behavior for journalists. What in hell is this toadying, this fawning, this sycophancy?

Newsweek is in serious trouble financially, and just took the radical step of completely redesigning their product from bottom to top. Some outsiders have cynically suggested that it's going to become something like "Tiger Beat", except that instead of fanboiing about boy bands it's going to fanboi about Obama.

I wouldn't give that speculation any credit, except that this idiotic sucking up makes it plausible. Thomas is one of the guys in charge of the redesign!

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Weird World at 10:21 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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