Zeitgeist Alert

That old 19th-century haint, the zeitgeist, has returned to haunt the 2008 presidential election. Especially perceptive observers have spotted him or her and are able to tell us what that blessed spirit of the age is trying to say.

After witnessing a throng of thousands in Des Moines screaming for Obama, his wife, Michelle, and celebrity supporter Oprah Winfrey , Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen declares: "There is no doubt that the zeitgeist whispers the name Obama and that it was impossible, if not historically irresponsible, to look at that platform -- three African-Americans -- and at the immense and mostly white crowd and not feel that something big was happening. Obama's banner captured that: 'Change we can believe in.'"

That, or maybe something big has long since happened that the Democratic Left still adamantly refuses to recognize, (since it would deprive them forever of the key tool for exploiting black constituents)--namely, that white America turned its back on racism long ago and has moved on.

But it's hard to say which message the zeitgeist was really whispering, what with all that yelling of the thousands of all those white people for Obama, Michelle, and Oprah. Maybe Cohen can ask the zeitgeist to re-send the message.

Then there's this zeitgest spotting in the New York Times:

Huckabee, meanwhile, stirs Frank Rich from his usually corrosive comportment to declare the GOP candidate is "catching the wave of an emerging zeitgeist."

The New York Times columnist writes: "The real reason for Huckabee's ascendance may be that his message is simply more uplifting -- and, in the ethical rather than theological sense, more Christian -- than that of rivals whose main calling cards of fear, torture and nativism have become more strident with every debate."

Still sounds plenty corrosive to me.

Frank Rich hates Christians, and has declaimed against the “God racket,” by, among other corrosive insults, painting Christians trying to save Terri Schiavo from being judicially murdered by her no-account husband, as, (according to Rich’s 2005 interpretation of the zeitgeist), “our culture…screaming its theocratic inclinations.”

You can bet that any time a guy like Rich starts boosting a candidate's religiosity as “more Christian” than his "less Christian" opponents, it’s because the zeitgeist has promised that the favored "more Christian" subject will ultimately result in “less Christianity.”

And anyway, how exactly does one "catch...the wave of an emerging zeitgeist"?