"There's no one as Irish as Barack Obama."

"As creepy and inappropriate as this singing is -- it’s not as bad as what Obama is actually proposing..."

Jim Lindgren tries to figure out what to think about that ludicrous, appalling video of children singing to the glory of Obama.



I'd like to say something about it too, but I can't force myself through even the first minute. I gag on treacle. But some people seem to think we should be deeply disturbed by this video. Lindgren links to Roger Simon, who says:

Watching this video has disturbed me more than almost anything I have seen in recent years. It is the kind of exploitation of children that reminds me of Young Pioneer Camps I saw when visiting the Soviet Union in the Eighties. You could say, as some have, that this is much like what happens with children in churches and synagogues across America, but this is about a political figure — one of two current presidential candidates and the one leading in the polls.

Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh was saying:

Basically the lyrics were, "Yes, we can, lift each other up in peace and love and hope. Change. Change!" You know, I watched the video. I did not see any Little Red Book with Obama quotations in there, the, "Yes, We Can Manual." You're talking about Chairman Mao, right? I did not see any of that. "Yes, we can. Nations all joined as one! Sing for joy. Sing for peace. Courage, justice, hope, peace, love, hope, change, change!" Kids 5 to 12. Little crumb-crunchers, skulls full of mush being polluted and perverted by a bunch of Hollywood pro-Obamaite liberals.

Rush wasn't buying too deeply into the notion that it looks like communism. (And he's always on the lookout for communism.) He was going on about the Hollywood liberals who poured resources into making a video that was supposed to look like a charming small-town community effort.

My main impression -- and, again, I can't bear to watch the whole thing -- is that soft-hearted liberals love to think of Obama as the embodiment of the ideal of racial harmony, and then, in that vein, it seems appropriate for children to sing a hymn to racial harmony. It's much the same idea as the old "Yes We Can" video. The error lies not in the worship of a man, but in the facile belief that a mere man can embody an ideal.

"American Prayer" of the damned.

I was just complaining about some annoying web video with low production values, but right after I posted that, I watched this new Obama-promoting video, which has the glossiest production values, and I found it impossible to watch... and I knew I wanted to blog about it so I kept forcing myself, but I had to click stop after a minute and a half:



What made it so insufferable? I admit that I came to it from the Corner, which primed me with the line "Personality on steroids: Obama as the coming, secular Messiah," but I don't think it was that.

It was the the insane discontinuity between the sad-sack dreariness of the photographs and those Hollywood celebrities who were made to look as though they belonged in settings of economic despair. They were photographed in black and white. They made sad faces. There's the normally smarmy Jason Alexander, pressing his hands together in mournful prayer. Jason Alexander! Do you think we will take you seriously because you have that serioso look on your face? The repetition of the word "prayer," with one praying celebrity after another, when you know you're going to be told that the answer to their prayers is Obama.... horrible.

And that miserable song. That vehicle for Hollywood celebrities to express their mourning, depressing, hopeful quasi-religiosity. Am I supposed to know it? I Google and find it described in Wired as "Dave Stewart's 'American Prayer,' featuring the former Eurythmic trying to come off like some sort of cut-rate Bono, as he strums a guitar that's not even audible in the song."

Adding to the video's cringe-worthy nature are celebrity appearances by Forrest Whittaker, Barry Manilow, Jason Alexander, Whoopi Goldberg and others, who join forces with on overwhelming level of "We Are The World"-type smugness.

Certain shots are so deeply embarrassing that we had to hit pause a few times just to make it all the way through. Watch at your own risk, and don't say we didn't warn you.

There's a vote over there to ascertain whether it's "the worst Obama song yet?" and it's winning, though not by all that much, which makes you wonder what cringe-inducing, celebrity-infested swill the "no" voters have in mind.

"We Are The World." We had evolved to the point where we all laughed at it, and now, have we suddenly slipped back into that 80s subordination of art to sanctimony? Then, it was for the sake of feeding starving children. Now, that aesthetic has returned in service of a politician. Yet, surely, it's true that we will look back on this election kitsch and laugh. Soon. Like right now.

ADDED: I'm watching this to the end now, and I'm just shaking my head at how counterproductive this is for Obama. These celebrities are so wrapped up in what they appear to perceive as the poignant beauty of their emotions that they don't see that they are beating us over the head with the idea that America is a terrible place. That is: This video is anti-American. That is not the message Obama wants right now!

Also, at 1:35, you can see the display of crosses that I happen to know is on the beach in Santa Monica. I was just there and took this photograph from the amusement pier:



I made it to the end. This video isn't merely terrible. It's a testament to tone-deafness. It resonates in all the wrong ways with the Obama campaign, amplifying the very things that Obama is trying to mute.

I've caught this viral video and must convey it to you.

YouTube is doing something to us. I'm not endorsing any candidate, but I've got to say this production is some amazing, low-key brilliance. It's lovely in so many ways, one of which is that it makes Barack Obama seem to be a man whose mere speech is singing.

ADDED: I've rewatched this video and am just stunned by it — especially the way will.i.am sings along with Obama's speechifying. I've never seen speech and singing combined like that. It's very cool. I love the way it is so grand, yet simultaneously seems perfectly casual and offhanded. And they've packed a tremendous amount of feminine beauty into it without it seeming forced — like Scarlett Johannson just happened to drop by and some unplanned thing made her smile like that.

Some folks in the comments are saying "yes we can... what?" And this, of course, is the usual criticism of Obama, which is not undeserved. But the video doesn't try to do everything. It creates a mood and reaches us emotionally. Now, the most evil political movement in the world could operate that way too, so it's our responsibility to put some analysis into our choices. But that doesn't take anything away from this historically great video.

By the way, I heard a bit of a Hillary rally today on the car radio. She seemed to be rousing the crowd rather well, talking about health care for everyone, to be achieved by fighting the drug companies and insurance companies. (Why must they be fought?) Then the crowd began chanting. The chant: "Yes we can."

Obama Girl versus Giuliani Girl.

(Via Eat the Press.)

"You're into border security/Let's break the border between you and me"... sings Obama Girl.

Obama Girl is our new glimpse into the way independent YouTube videos are going to transform campaign advertising:



According to Jake Tapper, the video "poke[s] racy fun at the way some voters have responded viscerally to both Obama's charisma and the personal nature of his political appeal." Yes, and the video also stimulates the viewer to feel even more viscerally bonded to Obama. I love the fact that there is nothing the campaigns can do about material like this (although I'm sure there are people who would like to regulate this kind of thing and think it would/should be legal to do so).

Background facts (in case you are foolish enough to assume the singing voice is that of the woman you see in the video):

The song was performed by Leah Kauffman, a 21-year-old undergraduate at Temple University in Philadelphia, who wrote the lyrics with a friend, 32-year-old advertising executive Ben Relles, and the music with her producer, Rick Friedrich.

An actress/model named Amber Lee Ettinger then lip-synched the song for the video, shot by filmmakers found on Craigslist two hours before Relles and Ettinger hit New York City one Friday in May to shoot the video on a DV camera.

"Not including the hours we spent working on it, it probably cost a couple thousand dollars," said Relles, a graduate of the Wharton School of Business, who said he did it for fun, not money, but is also selling "Obamagirl" and "I Got a Crush on Obama" T-shirts.

And they do like Obama and hope to help him -- with material he can never (openly) approve of. Interesting how his inability to control it allows something so unacceptable to have its effect helping him.

But this is America. Meanwhile, in Iran, they're executing porn actors.

UPDATE: Ben Relles grew up in Madison.