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chatterbox: Gossip, speculation, and scuttlebutt about politics.

Ray's Original ChatterboxAccept no substitutes: Obama Messiah Watch, part 7.

By Timothy Noah
Posted Wednesday, April 4, 2007, at 4:44 PM ET
Barack Obama sculpture. Click image to expand.

Is Barack Obama the alpha and omega? To answer this question, Slate has been gathering gratuitously adoring biographical details from newspaper, television, and magazine profiles of the U.S. senator from Illinois, best-selling author, Harvard Law Review president, Men's Vogue cover model, Grammy winner, and improvement on all forward strides in civil rights since 1957 (and possibly earlier). Now, other questing spirits are beginning to ask the same question. The Weekly Standard, which in the past distinguished itself with exposés of plagiarism by Doris Kearns Goodwin and others, is trying its own hand at plagiarism with a new feature that spotlights fawning news coverage of Obama. It's called … "Obama Messiah Watch."

Hey guys, think up your own jokes.

Less likely drawn from Slate is art student David Cordero's very witty papier-mâché sculpture of Barack Obama as Jesus Christ, on view at a Chicago art gallery. The Associated Press reports that the Archdiocese of Chicago has not seen the sculpture, which is called Blessing, and therefore will offer no comment. But I'll bet Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I., hustles over in a jiffy when Cordero's sculpture starts weeping real tears.

Obama Messiah Watch archive:
Jan. 29: Took very few notes in class!
Feb. 5: Mastered laws governing universe!
Feb. 7: Shares ancestor with George Washington!
Feb. 9: Dug jazz when he was still a middle-schooler!
Feb. 13: Communicates (possibly) with space aliens!
Feb. 14: Better for blacks than civil rights!

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Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.
Photograph of a sculpture of Barack Obama by Charles Rex Arbogast/AP.
E-mail Timothy Noah at .
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