That’s Obama’s description of Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake aka Chief Sitting Bull in a new book he’s written for children called Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters:
President Obama’s picture book for kids, Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters (Knopf, $17.99), pays tribute to 13 Americans whose traits he sees in his own children.The 31-page book, for kids ages 3 and up, is filled with lyrical questions for Malia, 12, and Sasha, 9, opening with, “Have I told you lately how wonderful you are?”The book, out Tuesday, is illustrated with Loren Long’s paintings of the Obama girls and their dog, Bo, as well as the 13 famous Americans as kids and grown-ups.A series of two-page spreads asks questions (“Have I told you that you are creative?”) across from short tributes. He writes of Georgia O’Keeffe: “She helped us see big beauty in what is small: the hardness of stone and the softness of feather.” His most controversial choice may be Sitting Bull, who defeated Custer at Little Bighorn: (“A Sioux medicine man who healed broken hearts and broken promises.”)
It can’t be surprising that Obama would focus on Chief Sitting Bull’s alleged (revisionist?) positive traits and ignore CSB’s history as a warrior raised in a culture that thrived and survived by killing and vanquishing her enemies and exacting revenge by scalping their defeated foes.
It is a little galling that he’d attempt to do this in broad daylight with children.
2012 will not get here soon enough… and the country is waking up to the radical that resides in the White House. This sort of thing is but yet another clanging bell.
