Earlier today, I advised those who engage in politics as a vocation or an avocation to keep Psalm 146 in mind — Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation.  The worship of political figures leads to very bad results, and among the more minor of consequences is it makes one speak like a fool.  That brings us to Chris Matthews, who apparently got annoyed with John Sununu’s crack about Barack Obama needing to learn how to be more American during a media conference call, a remark for which Sununu apologized almost immediately.  Matthews immediately called a convocation to address the need for tolerance by inviting left-wing Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson and one-time Louis Farrakhan defender (and later, critic) Rep. Keith Ellison to discuss what haters those Republicans are.

Before Matthews could let them speak a word, however, he told his MSNBC audience that Barack Obama should be above criticism, because he’s, er … perfect. No, really:

MATTHEWS: “This guy’s done everything right. He’s raised his family right…. Everything he’s done is as clean as a whistle. He’s not only never broken any law–he’s never done anything wrong. He’s the perfect father. The perfect husband. The perfect American.”

Small wonder Microsoft wanted out of the Church of the Divine Obama:

The inherent constraints of being locked into a joint venture sometimes handcuffed Microsoft and NBC.

Microsoft, in particular, had grown frustrated by contract terms requiring it to exclusively feature MSNBC.com content on its own websites. That exasperation was exacerbated by the MSNBC cable channel’s strategy to counter Fox News Channel‘s appeal to conservative viewers by tailoring its programming for an audience with a liberal viewpoint.

The strategy fed a perception that material from MSNBC’s website was politically slanted, too.

“Being limited to MSNBC.com content was problematic to us because we couldn’t have the multiple news sources and the multiple perspectives that our users were telling us that they wanted,” said Bob Visse, general manager of MSN.com.

It’s okay to like Barack Obama if you support his policies.  It’s the worship that gets us into trouble — and when the media becomes the high priest to those in power and declares all criticism to be hatred, well … that’s when the real problems start.