{"id":1078,"date":"2009-09-29T01:57:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-29T05:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?p=1078"},"modified":"2015-10-21T17:38:46","modified_gmt":"2015-10-21T21:38:46","slug":"can-you-say-personality-cult-boys-and","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?p=1078","title":{"rendered":"Can you say &#8220;personality cult,&#8221; boys and girls?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the things I missed last week was the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/blogs\/2009\/09\/24\/politics\/politicalhotsheet\/entry5335819.shtml\">creepy little story<\/a> of New Jersey elementary-school kids being taught songs in praise of Barack Obama. I&#8217;m sorry, that&#8217;s just un-American; in this country, we don&#8217;t venerate our leaders until they&#8217;re safely off the stage, and usually dead. This sort of engineered adulation belongs in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kim_Jong-il\">places like North Korea<\/a>, not here. I&#8217;m with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.blogger.com\/comment.g?blogID=6004750&amp;postID=6501875064485034315\">Tyler Dawn<\/a>\u2014I&#8217;d find this just as creepy and just as nauseating if it had been for President Bush, or President Reagan, or anybody else.<\/p>\n<p>Incidentally, for all the folks who were having hysterics and mocking conservatives for their reaction to the President&#8217;s school speech\u2014granted that that reaction was in many instances excessive\u2014stuff like this is the reason for it. It wasn&#8217;t that the President was speaking to our kids, it was the suspicion that he wanted to politicize them and turn them into Obamabots\u2014and that the public-school system would, in large part, gladly go along with that agenda\u2014that sent so many people up in flames; and garbage like this only reinforces and aggravates those concerns.<\/p>\n<p>Now, obviously, it&#8217;s not likely that this was directly orchestrated by the White House; but it&#8217;s all of a piece with the politics-by-personality-cult approach Barack Obama and his campaign have taken all along. It&#8217;s the sort of thing that prompted <a href=\"http:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?p=1985\">even a liberal like Doug Hagler<\/a> to complain about the messianic tone of the Obama campaign, which went along with the candidate&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?p=1725\">apparent messianic view of his own leadership<\/a>. This isn&#8217;t even the first creepy video this has produced\u2014<a href=\"http:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?p=1718\">not by a long shot<\/a>.<\/p>\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"720\" height=\"405\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/FO3NBqT3LBc?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the things I missed last week was the creepy little story of New Jersey elementary-school kids being taught songs in praise of Barack Obama. I&#8217;m sorry, that&#8217;s just un-American; in this country, we don&#8217;t venerate our leaders until they&#8217;re safely off the stage, and usually dead. This sort of engineered adulation belongs in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[74,67,62,63,66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-children","category-culture-and-society","category-politics","category-video"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6R3Ax-ho","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1527,"url":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?p=1527","url_meta":{"origin":1078,"position":0},"title":"Laughing at Uncle Joe; or, is Joe Biden the new Dan Quayle?","author":"Rob Harrison","date":"27 January 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I like what Ed Walsh has to say about this:In\u00a0an earlier post, I mentioned the trouble comedians were having coming up with a funny trope to use\u00a0to poke fun at President Obama. The experts\u2019 conclusion seems to be that Vice President Biden\u00a0is the\u00a0fattest target for humor in the Administration.Now we\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Humor&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Humor","link":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?cat=107"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":747,"url":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?p=747","url_meta":{"origin":1078,"position":1},"title":"Barack Obama, Manichaeus, and the Pharisees","author":"Rob Harrison","date":"1 October 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"President Obama\u2019s Rolling Stone interview is deeply troubling to me, for reasons that Commentary\u2019s Peter Wehner captures quite well. As Wehner says, Rolling Stone paints a portrait of a president under siege and lashing out. For example, the Tea Party is, according to Obama, the tool of \u201cvery powerful, special-interest\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Barack Obama&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Barack Obama","link":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?cat=74"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1403,"url":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?p=1403","url_meta":{"origin":1078,"position":2},"title":"Candidate Obama vs. President Obama","author":"Rob Harrison","date":"25 March 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"C4P calls this NRSC ad \"devastating.\" \u00a0They're right. \u00a0Barack Obama stands condemned out of his own mouth.","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Barack Obama&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Barack Obama","link":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?cat=74"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1493,"url":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?p=1493","url_meta":{"origin":1078,"position":3},"title":"Isn&#8217;t the election over?","author":"Rob Harrison","date":"10 February 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"And didn't Barack Obama win? \u00a0And if so, shouldn't somebody clue him in so he can stop campaigning and start governing?If you're wondering that, too, after President Obama's appearance in our neck of the woods to campaign for the so-called \"stimulus\" bill, take heart, because we're not alone in our\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Barack Obama&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Barack Obama","link":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?cat=74"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1201,"url":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?p=1201","url_meta":{"origin":1078,"position":4},"title":"Perhaps too much credit?","author":"Rob Harrison","date":"28 July 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"The other day,\u00a0I tipped the hat to Barack Obama\u00a0for his gracious response to Cambridge, MA police officer Jim Crowley. At the time, I hadn\u2019t really thought about the fact that his motivation for doing so might be purely political\u2014namely, that he might have significant political reasons for wanting the flap\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Barack Obama&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Barack Obama","link":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?cat=74"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1494,"url":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?p=1494","url_meta":{"origin":1078,"position":5},"title":"This makes sense","author":"Rob Harrison","date":"9 February 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the things that\u2019s been hard for me to understand about our president is how all his talk of bipartisanship\u2014and his apparent firm belief in his ability to work in a bipartisan fashion\u2014squared with his extremely partisan voting record. \u00a0In her column today,\u00a0Carol Platt Liebau makes a point that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Barack Obama&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Barack Obama","link":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/?cat=74"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/rjaharrison.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/RINO-pig.jpg?fit=400%2C303&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1078"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5031,"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1078\/revisions\/5031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rjaharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}