Children in Politics

Why put images of children and children’s voices on the media in this fashion? Could adults not ask? Of course they could. But someone somewhere thought that having children ask would be cute or attractive. It is an abuse of our children to have them appear to say words which are really not their own. This is the adults of society using the psychological implications of the innocent child for political gain. And this brings the child into a/the dominant hegemony before being aware enough to think for him or herself.

Look at this:



This seemingly benign use of children is an indoctrination tool being used on the children and then being presented to the public as a spectacle.

Someone in the public then chose to subvert the message through juxtaposing symbols resulting in this collison montage:




We get the point. Don’t we? This media producer sees the correlation between using our children to propose Obama’s presidency and using them to propose Fascism. But who is abused and who is the abuser? Is this how we hoped the shifting of the power of media to the masses would be used? Perhaps some would see fun in this juxtaposition. I see only abuse of the meek in both productions. Through my intuition I feel sick about this use of children in this new “free access” media. When the powerless are used by the powerful there is something off, whether it is on Youtube or Network TV.

Let the kids alone. Let them enjoy their undetermined youth. Should we parade them?




No, we should not parade children in political campaigns. Yes, these depict beautiful moments. Beautiful private moments forever stained by discussions of adult motives:





Is this serious professional journalism? Perhaps they are producing the media which they believe to be desirable? And who are they? Adults.

At least Michelle Obama thinks she should protect her children’s privacy. This is a noble cause but not the whole truth. While talking about protecting their privacy, we see the children in larger than life images behind the hosts of The View:




Children are not intellectual adults. They may have the capacity to ask many pertinent questions (even if done innocently). This use of children is an appeal to the psychological aspect of our fondness for children. Political candidates and commentators use children for these purposes.

In this video, images of young children are paired with a child’s voice-over. Imagine as you listen and view if the images were the same and either John Mc Cain’s or Barack Obama’s voice was the voice-over.



Well, how did you do imagining our (political) adults as the voice instead of the child? Would it have the same impact? What if the video did not invade the privacy of the children in the footage and just showed Obama or McCain explaining their opinion? A novel idea perhaps? Have the candidates speak.

I suggest we get the children out of political fighting. Maybe the candidates will have to come up with more than a 10 second sound-bite.