Wingnuts Furious: Black Kid Said The Darnedest Thing

This video of an 8-year-old saying a prayer for Barack Obama is the latest cause for wingnut outrage, because the kid appears to be praying to the President:

"Barack Obama thank you for doing everything and all the kind stuff. Thank you for all the stuff that you helped us with.”

And so on. We liked that perfect 8-year-old moment where the kiddo says "And when you get older you will be able to do great things."

Ah, but there has to be something sinister at work here. Proof, say the usual suspects, that Obama is the focus of a cult of personality, or that The Blacks think he's Jesus, or that the parents (if he even has two parents, haw haw!) have brainwashed the poor child to spout pro-Obama propaganda. It's just like North Korea!! Fox Radio panicmonger Todd Starnes asked, "What kind of a parent would allow their child to blaspheme God?" And let's not even start with WND.

Rather than piling on, The Blaze  weirdly played the voice of reason, -- and not for the first time! -- pointing out that this is an 8-year-old child, after all, and maybe a single video of an 8-year-old kid is not worth all the agita?

While some have expressed disgust and outrage over the prayer, there are a few scenarios worth pondering. While a prayer directly to a person who isn’t a deity is seen as theologically unsound by many Christian denominations and people of divergent faiths, it very well may be that the young boy was simply looking for a way to show his gratitude to Obama. Perhaps the video was filmed and posted in jest. Or maybe the boy just doesn’t fully understand prayer at such a young age and his heart was in the right place, but his words came out wrong.

To those possibilities, we'd also add the tendency of 8-year-olds to hero worship -- they're enthusiasts, whether for Pokemon or the Red Sox or whoever their parents say is a good president. Oh, and did we mention -- 8 years old? Art Linkletter made a pretty good living just asking little kids questions. And that little "Barack Obama!" cheer at the end is adorable.

This is certainly not the first time The Blaze has been surprisingly reasonable about a rightwing meme. Let us now praise not-so-famous debunkings:

• In March 2011, they took apart James O'Keefe's dishonest editing of his NPR videos, concluding that O'Keefe had left out evidence that NPR execs refused to take cash to slant coverage.

• In January 2013, they ran a point-by-point debunking of the Sandy Hook conspiracy claims.

• In March 2013, The Blaze debunked a claim that the Army gave Nidal Hasan a promotion and a medal while he was in jail and awaiting trial for the Fort Hood massacre -- it was from a parody site. Glenn Beck completely ignored his own website and repeated the debunked claim on his radio show last week.

• Just last week, The Blaze debunked a conspiracy theory claiming that a military coup against Barack Obama was afoot -- supposedly in revenge for the hacking of Colin Powell's email. (And how did we miss that one?)

So, hey, credit where it's due, The Blaze's Billy Hallowell: That's easily the calmest thing we've seen written about this video by anyone on the right. And we won't even hold it against you that your commenters are ... well, your commenters.

It's a cute kid in a video. Calm the fuck down.

[ YouTube / TheBlaze ]