Colinitis.

Colin Powell's got most of the nation's press corps down on its knees. The same folks who have helped make cynicism, especially about politicians and the political process, a national religion have become ga-ga over "the General." Powellmania is here.

The most shameless performance so far belongs to Barbara Walters. (So who's surprised?) The same network that turned one of its "news magazines" into a one-hour infomercial for Sony and Michael Jackson donated another hour, this one on 20/20, to the Random House publicity department so that Powell could sell his book - and himself - to the country. Walters, whose normally unctuous style is already legendary - this is a "journalist" who treats Tom Hanks as if he were Moses - was locked in the genuflect position the whole time. Exhibiting approximately eighteen wardrobe changes throughout the interview, Walters gushed about Powell being, first and foremost, a man dedicated to his family, and parroted his characterization of the U.S. Army as one big happy family. Tough questions revealed that he loves his wife, loves the Army, and is a fiscal conservative who cares about people. Barbara's message to America? "Let's give it up for Colin Powell."

Who else likes Powell? Nearly everybody. He has been interviewed reverentially everywhere - on the nightly news shows, Today, Larry King Live - and treated with the awed deference that might be reserved for Queen Elizabeth, or the ghost of Martin Luther King Jr. This Week With David Brinkley, which now seems to have William Kristol and Bill Bennett on retainer as political "observers," devoted a whole show to Powell, in which we learned not one new thing about the guy, except that Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition (do we really have to see this twerp on Sunday morning?) isn't ready to denounce him yet. We did learn that Powell is "selling as fast as his book." "If books were votes," noted Jim Wooten, "Powell would be President."

Much of the commentary suggested that Powell doesn't have to talk about issues too much - issues, smissues - because Powell is "a leader." As Bill Bennett said, if Powell talks to the country about "duty, honor, country, service, God, and family - that is a pretty good agenda." George Will, who has been raining on Powell's parade for weeks because he isn't conservative enough and because Will is pulling for his friend Bob Dole, who employs Will's wife as a speech writer, pointed out that this wasn't an agenda at all and dismissed Powell as an "amiable deliverer of homilies." God, I hate it when I agree with George Will.

Powellmania has been perfect for the pundits for a variety of reasons. First, they can make all kinds of far-flung predictions in the face of zero information. Second, they have an opportunity to ridicule those on the left, and to use one African American eminently acceptable to many whites to marginalize another a bit more threatening - Jesse Jackson. Jackson's perfectly reasonable questions about Powell, which were quoted by Henry Louis Gates in The New Yorker, were, "Have we ever seen him on a picket line? Is he for unions? Or for civil rights? Or for anything?"

Commentators from Maureen Dowd in The New York Times to David Brinkley tweaked Jackson for being petty and jealous. As Brinkley asked familiarly, after reading this quote, "What's gotten into Jesse? Nothing new?" Chuckles all around. Maybe Jackson is irritated by Powell's second-coming reception. But he's also one of the few people who's had the guts to say, "Excuse me," in the face of the media-powered Powell juggernaut.

Powellmania also comes in very handy in a week when Congress moved ever closer to dismantling welfare and eliminating Medicaid. Just look at the guy. He grew up in a racially mixed, poor neighborhood. He experienced racism. And here he is, right at the top. Without welfare and Medicaid, the rest of them will have to do this, too. In fact, according to Fred Barnes, welfare "reform" should be a boon to Merrill Lynch. "People will work, they'll save, and they'll invest. That's what will happen," announced Barnes. Right - all that leftover swag from a chambermaid's salary can go right into a no-load mutual fund. Now I get it!

As for Medicaid, that's going to get a lot better, too. "States are going to put these people in HMOs," announced Barnes. "It's going to be more efficient." I would like to note here that the one pundit who consistently attacked the rightwing take on all this legislation as "historic" and progressive was Eleanor Clift, who denounced the Congressional actions on both welfare and Medicaid as "a scandal." She also lambasted Michael Barone for using the term "class warfare" to complain about Democratic denunciations of a tax cut for the rich. Speaking for thousands of us on our living-room sofas, she demanded, "Why is it called class warfare when you go after the rich, but not when you go after the poor?" The boys just patronized her.

The best wrap-up question was asked by the master, John McLaughlin. "In the year 2000, will we look back at this historic legislation and view it as a plus or a minus?" Well, gee, John, who do you mean by "we"? And the only thing more moronic than sitting around wasting air time on predictions about whether Powell, once he's sold a trillion books, will run for President, is predicting what will happen in the year 2000.

Despite all of the exposes that have been published by journalists and critics alike about the press's total capitulation to the Pentagon during the Persian Gulf war, we are seeing almost no evidence of the press having learned from this, or being at all irritated about how they were had - including, and especially, by the likes of Powell. In fact, they're coming back for more.

Meanwhile, the real people the pundits should have been talking about - the thirty-two million people, many of them kids, who get health care through Medicaid, the millions of mothers on welfare who will still have no child care and, now, no health care for their kids - are conveniently shunted aside for Powellmania.

Susan Douglas teaches at Hampshire College. Her column appears in this space every month.