Son of Promise, Child of Hope

Ask your child if he or she has been exposed to this book at school.

Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope

'Cause I'm just a tad curious. I've got to wonder what the precedent is for such adulation of a sitting president that started well before he was even elected.

This is the moving story of an exceptional man, as told by Nikki Grimes and illustrated by Bryan Collier, both winners of the Coretta Scott King Award. Barack Obama has motivated Americans to believe with him, to believe that every one of us has the power to change ourselves and change our world.

Vagueness is the common thread of everything surrounding this man. It's moving because he's so exceptional that he movitivated people to believe in change. Wow. Cherry cream soda with that cotton candy?

What, really, is exceptional about this man? (I get that he's the first African-American to be elected President. But that was an event a whole heck of a lot of other people had a lot to do with). What has he accomplished? Motivating people to believe with him? To believe that every one of us has the power to change ourselves and change our world? What does that even mean? I mean, Hitler changed the world. Stalin changed the world. Hirohoto changed the world. Ghengis Khan changed the world. No doubt change can be good. But when it's a big box wrapped in shiny paper and you have no idea what's inside ... it's prudent to ask questions about where it came from, who put what in there, and why -- before you go diving in to the wrapper.

This is generally the job of a free and independent press, but it was so busy being motivated to believe in Him that it neglected to do that, and now calls anyone who tries a backward racist hate monger trying to foment violence. This was likely a part of the plan of the people who wrapped up that shiny box and sold it to an America that they told every single day for 8 years (and also quite frequently for many years before that) ... should hate itself. A vote for the shiny box, the huckster preachers said, was a vote for our redemption. And now that we've been redeemed, we should just keep our sorry mouths shut if we know what's good for us.

The press is so vested in this man and this presidency it knows it will lose the credibility it thinks it still has if it starts to seriously ask the questions that have been raised and answer them with something other than, "Oh, that's crazy talk! We don't need to go there!"