Michelle Malkin, journalist par excellance, tracked down the infamous elementary school that dared to have a few kids sing the songs in this video back in February to celebrate Black History month:
One wonders what would have happened had students been “coerced” into singing a song praising our former President Bush. Oh wait! That actually happened back in 2006 where kids at the annual Easter Egg Hunt at the White House learned a song to praise Bush for his response to Hurricane Katrina! Seriously, that isn’t a satirical story from The Onion, it really happened:
[B]ack in 2006 children from Gulf Coast states serenaded First Lady Laura Bush with a song praising the President, Congress, and Federal Emergency Management Agency for their response to — of all things — Hurricane Katrina. The lyrics were as follow:
Our 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!
The event took place at that year’s White House Easter Egg Roll and included roughly 100 children from Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
Considering what a truly horrendous heckuva job President Bush did for the victims of Katrina (even John McCain felt the need to lambaste the Bush administration about their failures)this strikes me as far worse than the the mild lyrics praising President Obama as our first Black President sung by the kids at the elementary school in New Jersey. Odd, but crack reporter Michelle M. failed to report on that outrage. And I don’t recall any media uproar over children being taught a song which praised President Bush for failing to do his job. I wonder why?
Well, I don’t really wonder, I think I know why, but all leave my opinion aside and let you folks reach your own decisions. Still, don’t you’d think the level of outrage being expressed by some people over this incident is a tad extreme?
But parent Leslie Gibson said, “I was shocked that the children would be reciting it in the way that they were and being fed the words, especially in light of it’s a politician and I think that political views should be kept at home.”
And parent Robert Bowen said, “I felt that it was reminiscent of 1930s Germany and the indoctrination of children to worship dear leader.”
Always with the Nazi comparisons. I’ll bet the Bush lies about the wars he instigated and his massive warrantless electronic surveillance program and torture regime and The Patriot Act and the elimination of habeas corpus were just hunky-dory with these folks. Nothing reminiscent of the Nazis, there. But a song praising our first African American President? Suddenly the Hitler comparisons are broadcast worldwide by our “liberal media.” Meanwhile we have an abortion doctor murdered at his church on Sunday, a Holocaust Museum guard gunned down, police officers ambushed and a part time federal census worker found dead, duck taped to a tree with the word “Fed” scrawled across his naked body. I suppose it’s too much to ask the right wing agitators like Malkin and Beck and Limbaugh, et alia, to tone down their rhetoric. But we sure as hell need to call them out on it. Their “commentary” and “reporting” is dangerous and incendiary and is getting people killed. Legitimate criticism is one thing, but hyperbole and lies and faux outrage and “jokes” which emphasizes Obama’s race and foster a climate of hate and fear is another thing altogether.
But back to President Obama’s plan to create his own version of the “Obama Youth.” He can’t get a public option health care plan passed through a Congress controlled by Democrats (yet), but that is no doubt merely a strategic move, designed to lull us into a false sense of security until the day our children turn us in to the authorities for detention in one of his re-education camps.
Right. And I’m a Sarah Palin fan boy.
Meanwhile, since Malkin decided to publish the name and location of the elementary school guess what happened? Actually you don’t have to guess. We’ve seen this story before, whenever Malkin goes on an outrage rampage performs a critical journalistic function and breaks an important story that the liberal mainstream media refuses to cover. In other words, this happens:
“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.”
The school district in which this elementary school is located is now refuting the claims that death threats were received or that the school was ever in lockdown. However, media outlets reporting on the story continue to claim that police had confirmed death threats were received:
Police confirmed Thursday night that threats had been received by the school. They did not say who or what was targeted.
On Friday morning, there was a larger than normal police presence at the school. Two police vehicles were parked in front of the entrance, and another officer was assisting a crossing guard nearby as national media crews descended on the quaint Central Jersey neighborhood.
One would think that Ms. Malkin would mention reports that the school’s principal had been subjected to death threats as a result of her exposure of this “creepy cult message” being promulgated all across the country by the nefarious Obamabot Conspiracy to subvert our Republic from within. If only to take credit where credit is due. Yet surprisingly, her blog makes no mention of the actions which her inflammatory, over the top reporting accomplished: the alleged shut down of an elementary school because someone decided to threaten its principal with violence and thus potentially put young children at risk. Of course, we have no way of knowing how serious the threat may be, but it would certainly terrorize me if I was a parent of one of the kids at that school.
Most of the subsequent coverage, has instead focused on how angry parents were that there children were forced to sing Obama’s praises. Interestingly enough, the original Fox News story which followed up Malkin’s reporting, actually interviewed some parents who didn’t sound that upset:
But Andrea Ciemnolonski, the parent of another one of the students in the video, said the song was part of a second-grade project on a variety of topics related to the month of February, such as Groundhog Day, Valentine’s Day and Presidents Day.
“They did songs about President Washington, Lincoln, and they did do one about President Obama,” Ciemnolonski said. “My daughter was in the class that did the songs about Obama. It was black history month. … It was something for the kids to celebrate.”
Ciemnolonski said she “just can’t look at it as indoctrination,” though she added, “The comparisons made were a little exuberant.”
You know, I think that’s a more appropriate response, don’t you?