Saturday, September 26, 2009

So the Kids Sang About Obama. So What?

There's a video that's all the rage on the right side of the blogosphere right now, one that shows a bunch of second graders singing a religious hymn to Obama. Some are suggesting that this is just one more indication we're hurtling headlong into some kind of totalitarian state. Here's a sample of a post with the video. It has a matching video of Nazi Youth singing from a movie clip.

Ridiculous.

Yes, the video was creepy beyond words and the event was totally inappropriate, but so what? It indicates an isolated instance of a public school teacher who has crossed the line, not a vast, national conspiracy to indoctrinate our children into some kind of fascist cadre. Let the locals deal with it and just get over it.

This inflation of isolated events is precisely what drives the race baiting industry. Blackprof* is a website of black professors who spend their time making mountains out of similar molehills. Some high school in Mississippi has a racial incident and they blow it up into a return of the Confederacy. The Obama-as-the-Joker posters were a similar thing. It was totally meaningless, but the racial grievance crowd practically trampled each other rushing to bring up the usual imagery of nooses and whips and bondage and whatever.

For those of you unfamiliar with statistical analysis, let me simplify it. In a nation of 350,000,000, you cannot draw conclusions about the general population from a few incidents and certainly not from a single one. Period. The creepy video is just one nut. We're not turning into Nazi Germany and segregated lunch counters aren't coming back.

Don't let sites like Blackprof and Hot Air whip you into a frenzy of anger by drawing conclusions from statistical outliers. It takes your time and energy away from things that really are important.

Cats.


* - I did not include the link here. My browser says it could be filled with viruses. Visit it at your own risk.

2 comments:

Dean said...

To Capt. Ed's credit, he did warn of commenters' posts being deleted if they revealed any specific names related to this instance favoring a locals-only approach.

Red meat will always be with us but I tend to agree that things can get a bit tedious at times.

mog said...

Wasn't it in the context of their singing about a number of Presidents? Each class doing a different one. I heard something like that. So now it's a big deal not when it actually happened. There are more important things to be concerned about. Overblown controversy IMHO.

I like your priorities - cats. Worthy subjects indeed.