BLOODY HELL, IS THIS AWFUL

I can't figure out how to embed it, and it's probably just as well for you that I can't, but TownHall.com's perky apparatchik Mary Katherine Ham has just posted a video called "Obama on Your Shoulder" -- apparently the last video she'll do for TownHall before she takes a new job. It's just awful -- and if you have your suspicions about the politics of Politico, it's telling that Politico's Jonathan Martin is calling it a "must-watch video."

You can watch it at either of the links I've just given you (the first one is from NewsBusters) -- but I warn you: have some music you really, really like cued up, preferably something very loud and room-shaking, because this is a song parody, and it will be harder to extract its awful singsong cutesy-wootsy-ootsy tune from your head than it is to get the troops out of Iraq.

The point of the video is that Barack Obama is a big bad Democratic virtuecrat nanny -- how original is that! And a messiah! Even more original! Its jumping-off point is a speech Obama gave a few months ago; we hear this excerpt from Obama:

We can't drive our SUVs and, you know, eat as much as we want and keep our homes on, you know, 72 degrees at all times....

And then the cutesy-wootsy song comes in and we see shots of a little toy Obama sitting on cutesy-wootsy Mary Katherine's shoulder being her good angel as she (gasp!) tries to drive! and eat greasy food! and shoot a gun! and the ootsy-wootsy song plays over and over until you just want the little toy Obama to turn into Chucky and beat the guitarist/singer/composer (M.K.'s husband, I believe) into a bloody pulp. And that's it.

Of course, the edit of what Obama said is just the human equivalent of the famous Gary Larson "what dogs hear" phenomenon. Obama wasn't issuing a list of thou-shalt-nots; he was making a very different point about dealing with the enrgy needs of developing nations (watch the video here):

If we lead by example, then we can actually export and license technologies that have been invented here to help them with their growth pains. But keep in mind -- you're right: We can't tell them, "Don't grow." We can't drive our SUVs and, you know, eat as much as we want and keep our homes on, you know, 72 degrees at all times, whether we're living in the desert or we're living in the tundra, and then just expect every other country is going to say OK, you know, you guys go ahead keep on using 25 percent of the world's energy, even though you only account for 3 percent of the population, and we'll be fine. Don't worry about us. That's not leadership.

He wants us to be leaders in developing new energy-saving technologies! Which we'd then export ! Quite possibly for profit! Ick, what a nanny-stater!

Hey, good luck in your new job, Mary Katherine. But please -- no more videos.