A Cycle of Abuse: Children in Politics

(For the purpose of satisfying this assignment) I will do something that I hate doing. I will take part in the perpetuation of an exercise that I am going to criticize negatively. It reminds me of previous societal arguments like, “how can someone dislike pornography when one hasn’t seen it”? or “how can one be anti-TV if one doesn’t know what is on it?” To make my point I must show examples of what offends me.

When elephants fight the grass gets trampled. This is happening when the innocent members of our society are used as pawns in our election brawls. If the members of society were aware of such atrocities I believe they would stop but they continue the cycle subconsciously or unconsciously (reference to Marx and Gramsci).

Look at this:




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 powerful adults of society using the psychological implications of the innocent child for political gain. And this brings the child into the dominant hegemony before being aware enough to think for him or herself (reference Gramsci).

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 a 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? (reference Adorno) 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. (reference Gitlin) When the powerless are used by the powerful there is something off whether it is on Youtube or Network TV.

I see the, sometimes ignorant, use of the media by adults to complicate and intellectualize that which should be left to the beauty of nature. 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:




Have these professionals viewed this footage? Could they continue if they had? How can they call themselves serious professionals? Perhaps I ask for too much. Perhaps they are producing the media which they believe to be desirable? And who are they? Adults. (In the conventional sense of the word)

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, and it seems that they don’t really care if it has a negative impact on the children’s lives. Why not leave them alone until they can decide for themselves?

In closing I will post another 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 straight.

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.

Too much grass is trampled while elephants fight.
Too many children are having “their” politics spoon fed to them before they can chew hard and spit out the stale bits.