During the 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama, elite political cartoonists on both the left and right expressed dismay and disgust at both Obama's “messianic” rhetoric and journalists' obsequious coverage through editorial cartoons. Cartoonists' images, as this textual analysis will show, coalesced around common themes in their critiques of media coverage and journalists themselves depicting Obamamania and Obama-as-American-savior. Rooted in semiotics and discourse analysis, this study finds more than a dozen professional cartoonists satirized journalists who covered Obama along three themes: casting journalists as clandestinely “in the tank” for Obama, as being groupies or fawning sycophants, and as portraying him in their coverage as a political Messiah who transcended politics.

中文翻译：

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嘲笑“弥赛亚”：社论漫画与记者“奥巴马狂热”的批判

在巴拉克·奥巴马 (Barack Obama) 的 2008 年总统竞选期间，左翼和右翼的精英政治漫画家都对奥巴马的“救世主”言论和记者通过社论漫画进行的谄媚报道表示失望和厌恶。正如本文本分析将显示的那样，漫画家的图像围绕着他们对媒体报道和记者自己描绘奥巴马狂热和奥巴马作为美国救世主的批评中的共同主题进行了融合。这项研究以符号学和话语分析为基础，发现十多名专业漫画家讽刺报道奥巴马的记者，涉及三个主题：将记者塑造成为奥巴马秘密“在坦克中”，成为追星族或讨好谄媚的人，以及在他们的故事中描绘他。作为超越政治的政治弥赛亚的报道。