Could it be magic? ... Obama supporters in Texas. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty
Young Americans are falling for Barack Obama - literally. Such is the charm of the presidential hopeful that some students attending his campaign rallies appear to be passing out from the sheer excitement of it all.
From the Ivy League's Dartmouth College comes word of one such meeting screeching to a halt after a young woman fainted in the campus gym where it was being held.
Something of the same occurred near Yale University shortly ahead of the recent primary vote in the state of Connecticut, as it did late last year among students in Wisconsin, more recently at the University of Maryland, and again this past weekend at Rhode Island College.
Almost as striking as the academic settings, say some, are the eerie similarities in how these various swooning interludes seem to be played out. Like a political version of Groundhog Day, the sequence starts with a young woman fainting, and then, as if on cue, Obama pausing mid-flight during his oration to call for water to be brought to the damsel in distress. (Watch this video for a selection of the similar-looking incidents.)
What exactly are we to make of this, asks the Wall Street Journal's online provocateur James Taranto. A cynic might wonder whether the whole thing isn't staged, given how often it happens and how well-honed Obama's standard response seems to be. Still, Taranto adds, if it's spontaneous, that's in a way even more unsettling.
For those with any romantic ideas about student scepticism, what might be even more disconcerting is the dearth of criticism of Obama in the American student media. In another far-off time - 2004, say - it might have been reliably counted on to damn at least some of these theatrical shenanigans with a little faint praise. Not so in 2008. The online site Uwire reports that so far, Hillary Clinton has picked up just three editorial endorsements from student papers compared to 42 for Obama.
"I would not say that Obama fits the pattern of a cult leader," Carl Raschke, a religious studies professor at the University of Denver, recently told the New York Sun, possibly with some of his own students in mind. "But there is a very cult-like situation: a population longing for absolute certainty and truth [that] is incapable of taking control of their own lives and wants someone to do that for them - a Magic Man."
An unscrupulous leader would take advantage of such a status, the professor argues, but Obama wasn't doing that. There's certainly no doubt, however, that he's riding the wave.
