There is a video making the rounds that is disturbing no matter what direction you are coming from. I am suspicious of the authenticity of this event for several reasons. First, Fox News is all over it, second, it was released just two days before President Obama’s speech to school children and third, they make a point of having the children recite repeatedly, “Barak Hussein Obama” (emphasis mine).The repeated use of the President’s middle name is, of course, a favorite tactic of right wingnuts who wish to link Obama with Saddam Hussein. Which is as silly as associating anyone named Charlie with multiple murders or looking for an axe in the hand of anyone named Lizzie.
I may be tilting at windmills here – perhaps this is NOT some right wingnut’s hapless scheme. It could be some left wingnut trying to reshape childrens’ minds. Either way, this shameless use of innocent children is an abuse and betrayal of parents’ trust.
The video can be seen HERE and it is the accompanying message and title posted on Youtube which also adds to my suspicions that this was purposefully orchestrated.
If I had children still in school, I would seriously consider home schooling...
Rocky - I can't quite catch what the children are singing -except his name of course. Do you know?
ReplyDeleteThis is disturbing - on so many levels. "Legit" or not - the right is clearly going to relish this.
Like you - I'm VERY suspicious & appalled.
A "shameless abuse of parents' trust" that is obviously the creation of a vast left-wing conspiracy.
ReplyDeleteSquid - there are purported lyrics on the 'net but, given the strangeness of the whole episode, I don't really trust them.
ReplyDeleteI could hear them singing something about equality for all, but that's about it.
LOL, Matt. Left wing, right wing, all God's children got conspiracies!
Still, on the weirdness and creepiness scale, this one is teetering on the edge.
To me, it appears staged. I have filmed children before and know something about staging in such a manner as to make the context that is scripted appear spontaneous. I am highly suspicious of this video. I am certainly suspicious of motive ... witness the comments beneath the video and the imbedded link, "How to worship Obama."
ReplyDeleteThis is an ugly and vicious piece of propaganda. Don't believe me? Search YouTube using the search flag "Nazi propaganda films" and watch the videos. The similarities are unmistakable.
Even scarier, this video will inflame the extreme right wing fringe who are most likely to act violently ... like murder in the Unitarian Church in Tennessee last year that killed two people.
My sister told me that when she was a kid, she used to watch a teevee show aired in Boston called "Big Brother." Yes. Really. And one of the things she remembers the host, [Bob or Uncle Bob, can't remember] did every day is drink a toast of milk to the president [who was Eisenhower] every day. She said he held up the glass, and the camera stayed on the official photo of President Eisenhower while "Hail To The Chief" played in the background.
ReplyDeleteThis was sometime in the '50s or '60s, and, of course, Eisenhower was a Republican.
My sister said no one uttered a peep of indignation that she could recall. Not even our parents, who were life-long Democrats.
Times have certainly changed. Imagine that happening today. With President Obama.
Shaw - you bring up a good point. Regardless of political affiliation, our parents were truly respectful of the office of president and that is woefully lacking today.
ReplyDelete8pus - I agree, the whole thing looked staged to me and that is so scary; the lengths the nuts will go to, using innocent children as pawns in order to continue to perpetuate their sick twisted agenda.
The world has become an ugly place and is getting uglier all the time.
Rocky, how did you find the above video? Here are two Nazi era propaganda films that illustrate how one can create ugly stereotypes that promote hatred:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OxTmH5KGGo&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVurfhMw1UU&feature=related
Your post got me thinking … and worried. The magnitude of the problem is enormous. Earlier this evening on MSNBC, Rachel Maddow reported on the smearing of Acorn. According to law, Acorn must report instances of voter registration fraud, which they do. But there is always a Catch 22: When Acorn reports every such instance, the right wing machine accuses Acorn of perpetrating the very same fraud Acorn has reported. Our news media has consistently failed to report the truth, leaving Acorn a casualty of right wing smears.
Change of subject. There is a racist, white supremacist website called Stormfront.org, the largest of its kind. Although no one knows for sure, traffic is estimated to be over a million hits per day. Here are some published statistics by topic:
Stormfront news and articles – 1,002,872 posts
Stormfront Ideology and Philosophy – 156,773 posts
Self Defense and Martial Arts – 126,729 posts
Genetics, Eugenics, and Race – 94,974 posts
Youth – 119,182 posts
Chat Lounge – 768,713 posts
And this is only ONE white supremacist website! One can only conjecture how many of these people are Tea Baggers, Birthers, Deathers, and town hall hooligans.
My point: The right wing extremist movement is large and dangerous … and there is a lot of inflammatory crap being generated by them. Super scary!
Look at the source, guys. The Cryptocracy 101 nutjob is in the business of producing conspiratorial fare in its many variations. Why, Obama's hatched a secret plot to off us all with swine flu, among other explosive cryptocratic news. This, for example, shows how seriously paranoid our cryptocrat is: Whatever you do, avoid the H1N1 vaccine! It comes with shackles and a bus, which will take you straight to a gas chamber. Or something equally alarming.
ReplyDeleteBreathtaking.
Oops! I shoulda looked at the source myself (LOL). While Cryptocrat's videos are in a similar vein as the deluded deathtodiversity4(??), who posted the children singing Obama's praises clip, they are not the same nut. If anything, DTD4 seems even crazier -- and equally untrustworthy -- when you look at his (or her) productions.
ReplyDeleteOn a related note, see this SPLC report on return of the militias after Obama's inauguration. It is disturbing.
I'm still a bit puzzled over the Republican's opening gambit which was to pretend Obama's supporters saw him as a messiah and worshipped him. Was it to preempt any comparison with the way Bush was pictured by some artists as sitting at the right hand of God or the way the Religious Right were fond of saying they now had Jesus in the White House? The worship/messiah meme seems to be evolving or migrating toward the worship/Hitler scenario, but I don't think it has any real effect on anyone but the converted/deluded since it's obvious to the rest of us that all of us have some areas of displeasure with our president.
ReplyDeleteOf course my confusion goes away when I drop the idea that anything they do is the product of sanity and reason.
(O)CT(O) - I stumbled onto it while surfing and I'm not sure where that first article was located but it had Fox News on it so I went there to confirm someone hadn't just hijacked their logo. And, of course, Fox News was covering it like it was legit.
ReplyDeleteLike you,what struck me was the Nazi-like propaganda aspect.
As you and Elizabeth have pointed out, there is increased activity among the nutjob militant supremists and that is cause for alarm. There is an atmosphere of lawlessness for the "cause" (and these days you can take your pick)which permeates every video, news clip, etc.
That is scary and like Fogg I find the whole Obama worship meme puzzling, he's right in that you just have to realize there is nothing sane or rational about what these wingnuts spout.
All the same, I think it is a good idea for us to not only be aware things like this video are going on but also to bring it out into the open.
In the words of Mad Eye Moody (sorry, I'm a big Potter fan!)
"Constant Vigilance!"
BTW 8pus - you should look at the SPLC link Elizabeth provided and along with your own citations, you might want to turn the re-emergence of the fringe nut groups into a post.
ReplyDeleteUPDATE on the video:
ReplyDeleteFox News scrubs any mention of school death threat in kids-sing-for-Obama story
September 25, 2009 8:19 am ET by Eric Boehlert
Great catch by Raw Story.
Foxnews.com posted an item about the right-wing crusade yesterday to vilify young school children in N.J. who sang the praise of the president Obama during a Black History Month event. In that original report, the Fox update noted [emphasis added]:
The tension at B. Bernice Young Elementary School escalated to such a degree Thursday that the school was placed temporarily on lockdown after its principal received death threats over a YouTube video that showed nearly 20 children being taught songs lauding the president, though back-to-school night events continuing as planned Thursday night at the school.
Soon after though, the Fox news report had been scrubbed of any mention of looming violence; it had been scrubbed of any notion that a right-wing crazy apparently called the school and threatening to kill the principal.
More about the above at: http://bit.ly/TkkOX
ReplyDeleteThe way to beat the Hussein-repeaters is to embrace the prez's middle name. Frankly, I can't imagine a sorrier pack of losers than the anti-Husseinites. We knew the man's middle name and voted for him, so what's their point? Barack Hussein Obama. Sounds just fine to me -- I'm delighted that we have a president with an international name and background.
ReplyDeleteYou can set me down anytime as --
"B. Hussein Dino"
Apropos of this subject, this article adds some historical perspective, A President Was Killed the Last Time Right-Wing Hatred Ran Wild Like This:
ReplyDelete"In that third year of the Kennedy presidency," Manchester wrote, "a kind of fever lay over Dallas country. Mad things happened. Huge billboards screamed, ‘Impeach Earl Warren.’ Jewish stores were smeared with crude swastikas.…Radical Right polemics were distributed in public schools; Kennedy’s name was booed in classrooms; corporate junior executives were required to attend radical seminars."
Today, conservatives are expressing outrage that Rep. Nancy Pelosi had the nerve to raise concerns about the onrush of violent political rhetoric. The Noise Machine claims it has no idea what Pelosi's talking about. But the truth is, America's most famous bouts of political violence (i.e. JFK, Oklahoma City, etc.) have always been accompanied by waves of radical, right-wing rhetoric. Given that history, the GOP's insistence that the hate now filling the streets couldn't possibly inspire violence seems woefully naïve.
The same concern is expressed by our good friend, Spocko, in this post: Preparing for When Someone Shoots at Obama.
Hey, as Sam Stein of HuffPo reminds us, our children sang songs for Bush, too -- in praise of his response to Katrina (seriously):
ReplyDeleteOur country's stood beside us
People have sent us aid.
Katrina could not stop us,
our hopes will never fade.
Congress, Bush and FEMA
People across our land
Together have come to rebuild us
and we join them hand-in-hand!
Awesome, no? Sounds as if The Onion writers came up with this.
Stein goes on:
The event took place at that year's White House Easter Egg Roll and included roughly 100 children from Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. President Bush, it seems, wasn't in attendance during the song itself. But he was there earlier, when the First Lady read the book, Will You Be My Friend: A Bunny and Bird Story by Nancy Tafuri, to the children.
"After the reading," the Wall Street Journal reported at the time, "Mr. Bush asked, 'Did you like this book? Does it tell you about what people can do to help other people, what bird did to help bunny? Be kind to him and give him shelter.'"
I invite everyone to watch the video I just posted on my blog on this subject.
ReplyDeleteWhoa... That's priceless, Shaw.
ReplyDelete(I left a comment on your blog saying as much.)
Call me Hussein.
ReplyDelete