The Department of Early Indoctrination

The American Spectator ^ | 10/27/2008 | Shawn Macomber

[markomalley]

In Plato's Republic Socrates argues for censoring poets and "men of a baser sort" who deign to misrepresent the gods as "praying and beseeching" sissy boys. After all, if youth were led to believe that society's mythological all-stars were "no better than men," it would doom the proposed state to be led by an elite vanguard.

The authors of two recent children's picture books detailing the life Barack Obama have taken this classical Greek advice to heart, turning Hillary Clinton's classic mockery -- "Celestial choruses will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect" -- into the straight-faced official biography for the four to seven year-old set.

Here, for example, is how Jonah Winter, striking a tone in BARACK somewhere between Vladimir Lenin and action movie preview narrator, translates the presidential race for America's impressionable babes:

[O]n the horizon, at the dawn of a new age, there appeared a man who would be the embodiment of King's dream -- a presidential candidate whose very being was a bridge that joined nations.

Not to be outdone, Nikki Grimes' Son of Promise, Child of Hope describes the early years of Barack, "his mama, white as whipped cream; his daddy, black as ink," thusly:

He was there in Chicago because he cared about these people. They were his family. People in Kenya were his family. Indonesians were his family. And no matter where he was, the world was his home. And who he was could be summed up in one word: loveable.

Well, at least she doesn't say Messiah.

[markomalley]

Also from the piece,

It is nevertheless telling that in picture books purportedly designed to teach children about Obama's life ample room is found for grand explication of his Holy Ghost-like omniscient global citizenship and the transubstantiation of his "very being" into a "bridge that joined nations" (past tense?) but no space for any earth-bound facts of his remarkable rise, which even his most diehard fans would presumably (hopefully?) acknowledge as corporeal in nature.

Alas, the frantic haste with which Obama's supporters have sought to cast him as the Nanny State übermensch -- so flawless, so supremely well-equipped to seize the nation back from evil Republican mole-men that he can reduce upper middle class white women to tears faster than Oprah -- reveals a latent insecurity regarding the actuality of Obama and his qualifications, never mind the cognitive dissonance of trumpeting a candidate as preternaturally singular while simultaneously accusing anyone who dares question the transcendental specimen's Everyman status of xenophobia, of racism, of an invidious invocation of The Other.

If you haven't been thoroughly terrified by this emerging cult of personality before now, I think now is a good time to start.

[screaminsunshine]

Capitalists just say NO!!! This election will come down to are you a Capitalist or a Communist.