Obama Reads The Great Works To Kids

A few days back, Barack Obama showed his human side. Now that surprises me, because I didn't know he had one. Be that as it may, he decided it would be good for his image to be seen reading from some of the great works designed for children to an elementary school audience. His two major selections were The Night Before Christmas, and selections from that other great author, Barack Hussein Obama. Yes, he read to them from Of Thee I Sing..

The Night Before Christmas was an original poem written by an Englishman to comfort a sick child. Of Thee I Sing was written by a sick American in order to rip off the also-ghost written John Kennedy book Profiles In Courage. This wasn't exactly the family barbecue that showed what a great family the Obamas are, but at least it did show that Barack doesn't eat small children. He just confuses them with old poems and bad history.

His excuse for the photo-op was that his daughters are getting older and won't let him read to them much anymore. Yeah, I'm sure he has that top priority need to read to his daughters. Said Obama, "So I wanted to borrow you guys and read to you. I was writing a letter to [my daughters] about how wonderful they are and it made me think about all the other wonderful people who are like them. So far, I've managed to suppress my gag reflex. It got harder as he told them he is just plain folks, and has to clean up the dog poop just like their parents.

He then proved that he really is the post-racial President by reading selections from the chapters of his book devoted to Jackie Robinson and Abraham Lincoln. Of Robinson, he said: "A lot of people didn't want black people to play baseball and so they were being mean to him and booing him and throwing things at him, but he was brave and willing to go ahead and play anyway and he became a beloved figure . . . ." OK, we get it. You don't look like the other presidents on our currency.

As for Lincoln, he threw the discussion open to the kids. "What were the most important things that he did?" he asked them. The inevitable response: "He ended slavery." Obama didn't ask "what else?" Like saving the Union and delivering the Gettysburg Address or the Second Inaugural Address asking for "malice for none and charity for all." They wouldn't have known anyway from the three line section on Lincoln in their textbooks.

He also side-commented that the scenes from The Night Before Christmas looked just like D.C. with "snow on the ground like it's supposed to look during the Christmas." I'm sure the murder rate in that little English town was exactly the same as that of Washington. And of course the snow would be the same filthy color. And just like that home in England, the workers took the day off because of the bad weather--just like D.C. DC Comics, maybe. He ended that thought with "And I'm surprised you guys are in school. A lot of times in Washington people don't go to school when there's even an inch of snow." Or when the sky is blue and the sun is warm, and everything in-between, Mr. President. Have you looked at the miserable state of the schools in our nation's capital lately?

The visit ended with one little boy asking if he could have the President's autograph. Says His Majesty: "If I sign autographs, then I'd have to sign for everybody." "Yay!" shout the students. They misunderstood his meaning. Says his Lofty Messiahness: "I signed the book for the whole school and it's in the library." The school is located in Arlington, Virginia, a safe suburb just outside D.C. If the school had been located in D.C. proper, the next question from the kids would have been "what's a library?"

Maybe on his next visit he can read to them from his collected works at Columbia and Harvard Law (where he was the editor of the Law Review). Just as soon as somebody can find them, I imagine.