The obvious tags for this post are "arts & media," "politics & government," and "youth issues," but I have a strong feeling I should use "religion & society" as well. (Via Dirty Harry's Place)

Update: After a day of appalled reactions from conservatives and liberals alike, the video was made "private"  on YouTube and pulled from its page at MyBarackObama.com. I'm shocked, shocked. However, some far-sighted soul grabbed it and reposted it, so here it is again. If you want to see it, do it quickly, before it gets pulled again. In the meantime, those who just yesterday were proudly announcing that Jeff Zucker had had a hand in making the video are now spinning like a top: "Nooo, not that Jeff Zucker! Not the head of NBC! How could you even think that! Ha ha ha! It was another Jeff Zucker who lives in California and has access to professional video equipment!" Even if that's true, and it may be, they sure weren't in a hurry to announce it before.

Comments

[labrialumn]

"We are little sunflowers, growing in the light of Chairman Mao"

[Kim Moreland]

It sure looked like the singers were standing in a public school library.

[LeeQuod]

An excellent one, lab, but I was surprised a little that you didn't reference the Bund Deutscher Mädel, especially given the impressive pipes of the first soloist. (Just imagine when she gets her two front teeth.)

[Diane Singer]

Scary. I could say more, but I think labrialumn has pretty much summed up my sentiments on these brainwashed little darlings and their utopia-dreaming parents.

[Sarah Geis]

Wow. I could barely watch that. I half expected the children to place their hands over their hearts and sing "All Hail Obama" at some point.

[Jason Taylor]

I wish they would quit calling people "the Messiah". T'ain't lucky. And I am only half joking with that one.

[labrialumn]

Jason,
We were told that many antichrists would come and had already come even when John was writing towards the end of the first century.

Lee, she does have an excellent voice.

Aren't they a little young for Obama Jugen?

[Dan Gill]

The video is no longer available.

[Gina Dalfonzo]

We must have posted at the same time, Dan. :-) Try again.

[Joe Dalfonzo]

I'm with Kim - that certainly looks like a public school setting, desks, teacher et al. You can bet your bippy that if they were singing the praises of President Bush we'd have another raid like the one that Janet Reno unleashed when she sent her Delta Force Gestapo to capture a terrified little child in FL. Long live the double standard!

[becky]

Funny how something that makes one group of people fell all warm and fuzzy can be kind of creepy to another group. And it is kind of creepy! Think I'll go have a reality check and maybe some insulin.

[Bryan L Singer]

This is almost as ludicrous as a story I heard recently about doctors volunteering their time to provide cataract surgery in North Korea. While I don't remember the source and this might be relegated to RUMINT (Rumor Intelligence, the most reliable kind of intelligence), there were stories of people weeping and crying, thanking Kim Jon-il for their sight.

No matter your political leanings, never forget probably the most powerful fallacy of logic, appeal to emotion. Anyone that stirs these kinds of feelings and passion should be listened to, certainly... but with one VERY powerful truth filter.

Humans by their very nature are flawed, selfish, and sinful. To say otherwise is to deny the very state of the world. To put THIS kind of fanatical faith in anything is of tremendous concern.

I have expect to see little multi-cultural kids in the "Obama Youth" brigade in a few years if this is allowed to persist. Hopefully we are not that dumb as a culture, but history seems to teach the world otherwise.

[Jason Taylor]

Oh, I don't think Obama is the antichrist, and there is nothing wrong with having affection for one's candidate-though even doing that to much smacks of putting one's trust in princes.
What is annoying is the hyperbole and it is given to both Obama and Sarah. I am not talking about the Palinfacts
http://www.palinfacts.com/?p=94
type of humor*: that is obviously joking. But sometimes it seems that that people are more serious then they should be and that is hubristic.

*by the way, one I tried to post in Palinfacts but couldn't manage for technical reasons was "Odin invited Sarah Palin to dine at Valhalla but she refused to dine with all those wimps."

[labrialumn]

Yes, it was a school music teacher. It was filmed in a private home, apparently that of the head of NBC, but the teacher and the student came there to perform, not practice, which presumably was somewhere else . . . like, say, school.

Of course, wear an anti-obama shirt to school and you might be expelled, as has already happened.

[benjamin ady]

I thought it was lovely =)

You guys have problems with this, but you don't have problems with Abraham nearly murdering his son, or Elisha cursing a bunch of little children like these followed by their being chewed on by two bears?

(Oh dear, now I'm in for it =)

Welcome back, benjamin. I, at least, have missed you. And yeah, you're "in for it", but imagine how much more cruelly you'd be treated commenting as a Christian at an atheist blog, or as a creationist at a skeptics blog. (I still have scars.)

I only have time to note that the Elisha passage would apply better to a roving gang of young adults than it would to children like these. And "baldy" was a far worse insult than you might imagine.

As to Abraham nearly murdering Isaac, well, the incident was supposed to be shocking for all involved and for all of us who now read it. That's the whole point; if you don't look at that passage shouting at the absurdity and injustice of it all, you've missed it.

Of course, in that case you've probably also missed the point of John chapter 19, too...