It’s no secret that many right-wingers have mostly lost their senses as of late. That helps explain this protest outside an elementary school. A bunch of Wingnuts, outraged that other people’s kids were taught to sing a song which said nice things about Barack Obama, showed up Monday morning outside the school with picket signs, claiming they were there “for the kids.” Of course, if any of the kids saw them out there–likely, as it was a school day–they would much more likely have been intimidated.

Which appears to have been the idea. After all, had they not wanted to risk frightening the children (“Teacher, why are those angry people screaming at us?”), they would have either protested on a day when school was not in session, or else would have protested at another location, like outside city hall or a school board meeting. Nope, they insisted on doing it right in front of the kids, despite pleas from local school officials.

All of this stemmed from a song a small group of kids learned to sing last February, during Black History Month, in which “Barack Hussein Obama” (I’d have thought the wingnuts would have liked the song just because it included his middle name) was praised. Really, it was a silly little song, like most silly songs kids are taught to sing, don’t understand a word of, and then completely forget about. The lyrics were sent home to parents, and no one objected. None of the parents pulled their kids out of school, and from what I can tell, none protested this weekend.

But an unimaginable crime had been committed: somewhere in the United States of America, about a dozen and a half children had been taught to sing a song that said good things about the president of the United States. We can’t allow that to happen without hundreds of viral videos, protests in front of the school, lots of newspaper editorials, hundreds if not thousands of angry blog posts, and the unrelenting, scathing criticism of an entire TV network (which broadcasted a video of the kids, without pixelating their faces–nice touch). All in correct proportion, of course. If we allowed this to happen with, say, another twenty kids, we’d soon be on our way to an Atheistic Socialist Worker’s Revolution with Little Red Books and Re-education Camps. Seriously, the protesters called this a “trend” of politicizing schoolkids. A trend requires at least two data points, preferably at least three. Don’t know what the other points could have been.

Of course, had the entire state forced its kids to sing in praise of Ronald Reagan, that would have been perfectly fine with these people.

Here’s the interesting thing: these protesters thought that a little ditty about the president was virtually child abuse, but they had no trouble protesting in front of the school in a way that could disturb, unnerve, or even frighten the children.

Kind of highlights what their actual priorities are and are not.