Not even behind the protective veil of a children’s book can President Barack Obama avoid falling through the thin ice of political controversy.
As his first children’s book, “Of Thee I Sing: A Letter To My Daughters,” was released Wednesday, media outlets criticized Obama for certain aspects of the book. Obama acknowledges 13 historical figures in “Of Thee I Sing,” all of whom he says possessed traits he now sees in his daughters, Sasha and Malia.
And Fox News just couldn’t take it anymore when Obama listed the Lakota medicine man Sitting Bull, who defeated Gen. George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of Little Big Horn, for his leadership qualities.
Now, Obama’s innocently designed book that begins with the line “Have I told you lately how wonderful you are?” is being labeled as the president’s latest anti-American move.
And we’re ashamed major media outlets and fellow citizens are attacking a children’s book simply for its inclusion of one of the most important historical demographics of this country — Native Americans.
To call the children’s book “anti-American” because it includes Sitting Bull rather than Gen. Custer is to deny the rights and history of the people who Americans ruthlessly slaughtered and forced onto reservations, and, furthermore, it suggests America should take no blame for the atrocities committed unto these people.
Sitting Bull embodies the very essence of dissidence on which this country was founded.
The only thing that’s anti-American is not including a footnote to explain how America is the country it is today because of our ability to massacre technologically inferior native people.
