A public school in New Jersey has produced a couple of songs about how wonderful President Barak Hussein Obama is. A video of the children singing the songs can be found on
YouTube. The lyrics can be found
here.
My read on the matter? Simple. Check out the lyrics and substitute the name "Richard Milhouse Nixon" or "George W. Bush" or "James Earl Carter" or "William Jefferson Clinton" and see how it sounds (maybe skipping the verse about "first black president.")
Somehow I'm reminded of the Christian song, "Jesus, There's Something About that Name" by
Gloria Gaither. Yet that is a song sung by people who believe that Jesus is the incarnation of God! If you believe that then praising Jesus makes sense. I find it hard to find any sense in these songs whatsoever. Especially such politically partisan paeons of praise from a tax-funded institution that children are required to attend under penalty of law.
One particular lyric in the Obama songs has been actually swiped from a Christian song: "Red and Yellow, Black and White, all are equal (they are precious) in his sight." In the original version Jesus is being praised for being the one who "
loves the little children of the world" while here the praise is taken from Jesus and given to Obama instead. How ironic that the school children are not permitted to sing the original song but are encouraged to sing the "revised version."
On the other hand, one phrase in one of the lyrics does a wonderful job of summing up the level of education that our children are receiving these days: ". . . we all doth say, Hooray!" I suppose that a Quaker, King James or William Shakespeare might have used the word "doth" but any English teacher worth a ha'penny should have red-lined the grammar and sent it back for an immediate rewrite. On the other hand the word "doth" does sound sort of biblical. Perhaps that was the whole idea in the first place.
Mmm mmm mm!
Note: In all fairness I would guess that the songs were written by (a) student(s) at the school and taught as part of a music learning experience. If so I'll not knock the author(s) but praise them for their creative efforts. I would say the same if a student had written a song about Jesus, too. But the adults who control the school and the content of the children's educational experience would not, of course, have allowed that song to be sung. And that, I think, is what children are learning in school these days: Jesus is banned (ie. "bad"). Obama, on the other hand . . .
