Hattip to Ed Morrissey at Hot Air. From the B. Bernice Young Elementary School in Burlington, New Jersey, a public school. Get them while they’re young, get them while they’re young. Yet another good reason to home school.
Cult of Personality? What Cult of Personality?
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 41 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Yep, my comfort level with homeschooling goes up a little more every week.
Here’s the Burlington schools superintendent’s response, which offers no apology whatsoever:
Dear Burlington Township Families:
Today we became aware of a video that was placed on the internet which has been reported in the media. The video is of a class of students singing a song about President Obama. The activity took place during Black History Month in 2009, which is recognized each February to honor the contributions of African Americans to our country. Our curriculum studies, honors and recognizes those who serve our country. The recording and distribution of the class activity were unauthorized.
If you have any further questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me or Dr. King, Principal of B. Bernice Young School, directly.
Sincerely,
Dr. Christopher M. Manno,
Superintendent of Schools
http://www.burltwpsch.org/?pageID=00013&docset=super&docid=200910011
Lyrics that would otherwise never be allowed at this school suddenly become acceptable, just so long as you substitute the name “Barrack Hussein Obama” for “Jesus”:
“Red or yellow, black or white, all are [equal] in his [or is it His?] sight.”
Mmmm, mmmm, mmmm.
And to think that last year many of us were criticized (quite harshly in some quarters) for poking fun at the messianic overtones in much of the adulation towards Obama.
There is just about no chance I will ever send any of my children to a public school. That was the case before this, and this just re-affirms my opinion.
Why don’t we scrap the lame lyrics and poor tone and just chant:
Duce! Duce! or Fuerher! Fuerher!
This is just sick.
But you’d better be nice to these kids, they will be watching you as you type, set your thermostat, fire a gun, hunt, drive a car, pray, etc. etc.
Big Brother needs eyes everywhere and cameras can only do so much.
Good Lord.
Have mercy on us, Jesus Christ, for we are a nation of frighteningly servile utter nitwits, singing praises to tubes of toothpaste and empty-suited politicians with gushing enthusiasm, while neglecting your altar, denying your Father, and rejecting your Spirit.
Except that these are just children, Knight and Excelsior, who were taught to parrot this nonsense by someone presented to them as a trustworthy adult. They may have vague notions of who “Barack Hussein Obama” is and what a “president” is, but it’s doubtful any of them really understood what they were chanting.
The kids don’t worry me nearly as much as the adults who took advantage of their innocence in this exploitative indoctrination attempt.
[…] One of the forgotten geniuses of American comedy, Red Skelton. Skelton rose out of abject poverty to become one of the great comedians of his time. As the above video indicates Skelton also had his serious side. A remembrance of better times when students pledged allegiance to the country rather than chanting hymns of praise for a living politician. […]
cminor,
It isn’t the kid in and of themselves that frighten me. It is what is being done to them and what that may make them do.
What is taught in today’s clasroom is tomorrow’s policy.
I love the part were they do the little “sieg heil”, “sieg heil”, “sieg heil”, with the nazi salute. It looks a lot like this:
http://www.authordon.com/images/site_graphics/hilter_youth_mind_contol.jpg
or this:
http://www.authordon.com/images/site_graphics/YouthColor.jpg
[…] A followup to my earlier post on school kids singing a hymn of praise to Obama. Hattip to Gateway Pundit. Apparently the video was posted on YouTube by the proud teacher behind this piece of agitprop. […]
Can I ask an rather obvious question? Is this a one-off activity? Or is there a clear and consistent pattern? Where is the actual evidence besides these seemingly isolated youtube videos?
It seems unless there is a clear established pattern of consistent activities like this within all schools that we are over-interpreting things. To claim this is the establishment of a “cult of personality” is to severely trivialize what a cult of personality actually is and what it actually looks like (sorry, the “cult” around Obama is nowhere even remotely close in scope to Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Hussein, Jong-Il, etc.)
It could just be a poorly conceived activity. Lord knows I had to go through a few of them in my schooling…
John,
if you see 5 or 10 roaches in your kitchen, do you assume they are isolated roaches? The fact is that there are obviously far more incidents which have not been videoed at all, and many that never found their way to Youtube.
Nobody is claiming that the cult of personality is currently at the level you mention, but those cults I’m sure started more isolated and progressed. That’s what we’re trying to stop.
@ Matt- are you comparing the public education system to a roach infestation? So is your solution is to fire all the teachers (cockroaches), seeing as the teacher (cockroach) who led the activity is supposedly a harbinger of all the other teachers (cockroaches) also leading similar activities? Maybe we need another analogy…
Is it obvious? I’m not so sure it is. Is it a “fact?” A fact is something “known to exist/have existed.” Apparently we have a few videos that prove one thing- these classes sang songs about Obama. Are they tasteless? Yes. Are they totally out of place in an elementary school classroom? ABSOLUTELY. Are they evidence of a state-sponsored attempt to hijack the brains of today’s children? Not sure about that…
Unless I see clear evidence 1) that students participate in repeated activities (aka, more than one) of this sort and 2) of a centralized mandate coming from Obama or Arnie Duncan or whoever that schools must comply with regarding COP activities, I will chalk this up to highly localized decisions on the part of individual teachers to be dealt with on a local level. How are we so sure that these activities aren’t simply the products of poor lesson planning? Why pick a conspiracy of nefarious intent over simple incompetence?
It is also amazing that for conservatives (the ones typically leading the accusations of a COP) that government is so incompetent on EVERYTHING, but Obama can somehow successfully implement an initiative to program the youth in a little over 8 months of his term in Office. Why the sudden assumption of competence?
While the activities are poorly conceived, let’s not go crazy about it. I am actually pretty critical of Obama, but I really feel this COP stuff is overstating the available evidence.
I can’t get my computer to run this. Is this “cult of personality?”
http://www.breitbart.tv/shock-discovery-community-organizers-pray-to-president-elect-obama/