UPDATE, OCT. 2: Holy crap! That didn't last long either! As of this morning, this above video has also been pulled, same reason. Try some of the other links and see if you hit paydirt.
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Well, ain't this interesting?
I'm not sure who is responsible for it, but the video I showed in a recent posting has been removed.
Now, when you click on it, instead of these darling little brainwashed kiddies singing praises to our clay-footed leader, there's a little message from YouTube:
"This video has been removed due to terms of use violation."
It appears censorship is alive and well in the good ol' U. S. of A.
Much as I despised most of the Constitution-shredding aspects of the USA Patriot Act, the writers of that piece of legislation have nothing on ObamaNation. At least the Patriot Act was cooked up in the halls of Congress, under public scrutiny (hysterical as it was in those days immediately after 9/11). Here, it's become policy to not say anything bad about ObamaNation, though there's no real legislation to track this turn of events. It just ... happened.
I'm not sure what the violation was that YouTube claims. A piece by the Contra Costa Times, dated Sept. 25, said the video was under intense scrutiny from several angles:
... news about the song brought a quick response from New Jersey's Department of Education. Spokeswoman Beth Auerswald said the department wants "to ensure students can celebrate the achievements of African Americans during Black History Month without inappropriate partisan politics in the classroom." Auerswald said the state would also look into whether posting the video online violated the privacy of students. Superintendent Christopher Manno defended the performance in Friday's editions of the Burlington County Times. "There was no intention to indoctrinate children," he said. "The teacher's intention was to engage the children in an activity to recognize famous and accomplished African Americans."
OK. One of the issues was whether the video violated the privacy of the youngsters.
Which is valid, but I think it's a crock. Check out YouTube sometime, and you'll see all kinds of videos for all kinds of things. You know in many of these videos, someone's privacy rights were violated.
I don't know if this has anything to do with anything, but Google owns YouTube, and has since November 2006. Google has been criticized for (among other things) left-of-center leanings. Here are a couple of links, some fairly dated, that point to this:
For those who missed the video, there are some YouTube sites that still have it, as I guess Google isn't that quick or that thorough. Yet. But you can click on any of these in the link. As of today, at least two still worked.
And since the Lord High Censor saw fit to excise some perfectly good news and really ticked me off in doing so, I'm rerunning this video from another link -- one that was still good Oct. 1. But go ahead to the site where I ran the original video -- the lyrics are intact.
If you haven't seen that video yet, check it out. While you still can.
(Special thanks to Darlene, my sister-in-law, for calling this development to my attention.)
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