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"As creepy and inappropriate as this singing is -- it?s not as bad as what Obama is actually proposing..."

Jim Lindgren tries to figure out what to think about that ludicrous, appalling video of children singing to the glory of Obama.

I'd like to say something about it too, but I can't force myself through even the first minute. I gag on treacle. But some people seem to think we should be deeply disturbed by this video. Lindgren links to Roger Simon, who says:

Watching this video has disturbed me more than almost anything I have seen in recent years. It is the kind of exploitation of children that reminds me of Young Pioneer Camps I saw when visiting the Soviet Union in the Eighties. You could say, as some have, that this is much like what happens with children in churches and synagogues across America, but this is about a political figure ? one of two current presidential candidates and the one leading in the polls.

Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh was saying:

Basically the lyrics were, "Yes, we can, lift each other up in peace and love and hope. Change. Change!" You know, I watched the video. I did not see any Little Red Book with Obama quotations in there, the, "Yes, We Can Manual." You're talking about Chairman Mao, right? I did not see any of that. "Yes, we can. Nations all joined as one! Sing for joy. Sing for peace. Courage, justice, hope, peace, love, hope, change, change!" Kids 5 to 12. Little crumb-crunchers, skulls full of mush being polluted and perverted by a bunch of Hollywood pro-Obamaite liberals.

Rush wasn't buying too deeply into the notion that it looks like communism. (And he's always on the lookout for communism.) He was going on about the Hollywood liberals who poured resources into making a video that was supposed to look like a charming small-town community effort.

My main impression -- and, again, I can't bear to watch the whole thing -- is that soft-hearted liberals love to think of Obama as the embodiment of the ideal of racial harmony, and then, in that vein, it seems appropriate for children to sing a hymn to racial harmony. It's much the same idea as the old "Yes We Can" video. The error lies not in the worship of a man, but in the facile belief that a mere man can embody an ideal.

Full post as published by Althouse on October 01, 2008 (boomark / email).