Ever time the News comes on they have to be reporting about something. Can't they give him some time to actually do something before they report, its like the tv show 24, telling you everthing that happens in his life in 10 minute segments. And a news show is doing the first 100 days of Obama as president are they gonna start the second 100 days after that and so on.
dong20 calls this a "cult of personality". I disagree, and say that it's the novelty of a new president:
You mention three aspects of Obama's "sainthood": tacky merchandise, news coverage, and the upcoming First 100 Days special.
I can't defend the tacky merchandise -- but those tacky merchandisers capitalize on
everything. Didn't we just recently stop hearing about those 9/11 memorial "silver leaf certificates" that are legal tender in Liberia, and have the numbers nine and eleven adding up to the face value of $20 (Liberian) dollars, yadda yadda yadda. Here were the commercials for the George W. Bush
tacky coin: this is
not a new phenomenon.
Extra news coverage? I doubt it. I can't prove it, but here's one metric: In January, 1993, Clinton appeared on
two out of four covers of
Time. In January, 2009, Obama appeared on
one out of three covers. In between, George W. Bush appeared on
no covers in January 2001, but (due in part to the 2000 election drama), he was on
six out of the eight covers in November and December 2000. This is a sample of only one magazine, and I don't advocate drawing a conclusion from only one data point, but. . .
"First 100 days" specials are routine, but the last time we had one was eight years ago, so you might have forgotten it.
CNN's special on Bush's First 100 Days is still online. The Washington Post had a
special section on the topic as well. Jim Lehrer's NewsHour on PBS
did an episode on Bush's First 100 Days, and still has available online their episode on
Clinton's First 100 Days.
In other words, all of the aspects you've mentioned are actually quite ordinary when there's a change of presidential administration; it's just that these things are so infrequent that we tend not to remember how bad they were in the past. (But trust me: I
definitely remember seeing Bush's smirk everywhere in 2000-2001; I'm still traumatized over it!)