The Reaction is Priceless

LOL!!!  Quick, where’s some sand I can stick my head in?

Ahahahahahahha oh the look on her face. Oh that is PRICELESS.

Go ahead, Michelle. Tell the little boy how wrong he is, how his mother is living in sin.

Ba-Bye, Michele. Your presidential aspirations have long been over and  I don’t think Minnesota’s 6th cares much for you any more either.

How long before Bachmann twists this to say the boy has been “indoctrinated” into the gay lifestyle? 

#irony

Agreed. It’s a shitty thing to make your kid parrot slogans and ‘zing’ politicians on YouTube. We should shame the parent for the tactic even if we agree with the statement.

I agree with this.  I actually smiled when Michele told the kid her ears must have been too far away. 

Kids just should NOT be used (more like pushed) to deliver messages like this; it makes the adults doing so look petty.  I’m reminded by the kids from westborough church holding those nasty, angry signs.  Or when my parents went to protest the addition of Playboy to the cable lineup.  They took me and made me hold a sign.  What I mostly remember is being scared because people yelled stuff at us.  I was around 8 and had no real understanding about what was going on. 

Obviously this kid wasn’t that willing either and it took much pushing for the shy little boy to say what his mom wanted him to say to the strange lady.  Still, we can hope that perhaps his words may have had some positive impact on Michele.  Maybe for at least a few seconds she saw gays as something more than gay, but actually as people…people with families with shy, quiet spoken little boys.

So the big question is…….. ???

Was this child forced into asking her that question and if he was I have zero respect for the person that forced him to do so.

While I really dislike her reaction children should never be used as pawns to push an adults agenda.

I would really love if the gay mother would respond and tell us the truth because I’m not sure if I should be angry at Bachman or angry at his gay mother.

I don’t see how the kid is being used as a “political weapon,” except that he is talking to a politician. There is nothing political about his statement. And so what if his mom told him to say it, what he said was true. Kudos to the mom and the child, but I agree, Bachman is a sitting duck at this point. Her career is over….and her husband is gay. obviously.

“your own statements” — you think the child doesn’t agree with the statement?

I want you to not be a jerk, but I don’t expect that to come forth (sic).

I’m not attacking her for her orientation. I’m criticizing her for treating her child as a billboard.

Well, she did push the child to ask the question, filmed it, posted it on youtube and now we all are discussing it.  So, it does add up to the mother using the child as a political statement.  That seems intentional though it’s open to some interpretation until the mother confirms/denies her motivations.

Damn auto-correct.

Maybe he does, but does he have good reasons? Is his opinion based on a well-informed and truth-seeking understanding of both the political problem he is addressing and the sensitivities associated with publicly voicing his opinion on the matter..?

The child’s probably as mature in his actions as many adults, I’ll give him that, but  displays like this, while powerful to those already on the same page, beg for an equally simplistic and outrageous retaliation.

jqb, The boy probably does agree with the statement, but that is immaterial here, and the fact that the statement is correct in our opinion is also immaterial here. I suspect that it was not his own passion, motivation or  impetus that brought him to say it to Bachmann.

Judging from his youth, his shy, mumbling reluctance, and his mother’s repeated urging him to speak up  in that scene so it could be recorded, I think that his motive was entirely from his mother’s premeditated and rehearsed coaching him, that she put him up to it, and he did it to please and appease her. 

I think its very likely that his mother wanted to say “I’m gay and I don’t need any fixing” to Bachmann, but she decided that having the boy say it would have a more dramatic impact, especially while it was being videoed. It looked to me to be a contrived, pre-planned set-up, and the boy was a pawn. The fact that he probably agrees with the statement does not mitigate that this was a very inappropriate exploitation of a child’s loyalty and vulnerability.

No one should use people as things, even for a “good cause.” Everybody thinks theirs is the “good cause.”

The boy certainly looks uncomfortable, suggesting he was being prodded by mom do this.  But worse, the way she quickly led him out of the room without even waiting for Bachman’s response was cowardly and basically teaching her son the techniques used by internet trolls. She should have had planned a calm, rational statement of her own as a follow up.

First comment knocks it out of the park.  Good job CWK.

So basically what I’m reading here in the comments is that no one here either was a shy child or has a shy child. Shy children have beautiful and miraculous ideas all on their own all the time, but lack the ability to vocalize them for one reason or another. The possible scenario that everyone here seems to be overlooking is that the child said “Mommy, you don’t need fixing” in response to something, and Mommy said “Do you want to tell her that?” and the boy was all excited until he actually went up to do it. Then his shyness took over and he shut down. What everyone is up in arms about, the coaching and “parroting”, might actually be this mother’s way of helping her son get over his shyness. Political gain? Possibly a desired side effect, but not necessarily a malicious intent.

You know, sometimes kids really say the most amazing thing and their parents just encourage them to repeat it, rather than training them to say something entirely concocted by the parents. Is it possible the kid was totally pressured into this? Sure, but you’re never going to know that, there’s no way to know that. Suppose the mother tells you she didn’t pressure him, are you going to believe her? Every once in a while it’s OK to just assume the best about people when it does no harm to do so. Of course, I’m sure Michele Bachmann had the exact same thought you did, so you can feel good about sharing her thought process.

I submit that you have no evidence for your hypothesis that cannot be just as easily explained by a kid who came up with this entirely on his own, but got shy in the face of a strange adult and needed encouragement. You suggest that the child was encouraged to speak up so it could be recorded, while Bachmann repeatedly said she couldn’t hear him. Is it not at least as likely he was encouraged to speak up so she could hear?

Would you believe her if she said the truth was that it was entirely the boy’s idea?

It was explained in the YouTube comments, but given the tons of idiots there making similar comments it got lost:

“Elijah’s mom and I were standing in line, and we were going to say something to her… but we opted not to. We were about to leave the line, but Elijah grabbed onto his mom’s coat and said he had something to say to her.”

The person making the video wasn’t even the mother, but someone else who was in line

The mother wasn’t doing the recording and the one who recorded and uploaded it didn’t even know the family

I have, Gus. Mine turns 19 soon. I have plenty of nieces and nephews as well. And no, I don’t have reason to believe that his comment was original.

He isn’t that young. Kids easily pick up on that stuff in the media and from other people

Really? Because I think you’ve made a huge assumption and are making a pretty inaccurate assessment both of the statement  and of the cognitive capabilities of children in defense of it. My five year old says things at that level, and beyond, all the time. It’s been my understanding that my kid is not in the least exceptional in that. Did you ever hear the expression “kids say the darnedest things”? This seems like just a child with what is really a very simple view point, the kind that skewers straight through all the adult B.S. (and occasionally misses some really important details, though in this case I think he’s dead on).

I don’t recall this many people complaining about the coaching in the Rick PerryIn Texas we teach Creatioinism AND Evolution video.

Even if the kid was not coached in any way, he’ll pick up the conversation in the house.  If mom complains about how Bachman thinks gay people need to be ‘fixed’, the kid will hear that and feel upset at Bachman for saying mean things about his mom.  And he’ll use the language in his environment.  Is that so wrong?

If you go to the very first comments on the video you’ll find a user named WeWatchBadMovies saying that she or he was doing the filming, that it was entirely Elijah’s idea, and that he wouldn’t let his mom take him from the line, he was determined to say it, and got stage fright when he got to actually speak with her. So do you believe that this person did the filming and is giving an accurate account, or are you still going to go with your assumptions about the mother? 

I didn’t see that, but it’s good enough for me.

Eight?  Geez, when I was 8 I was walking down the street alone once (not unusual in the 70s) and came across some JWs pushing “Watchtowers”.  I don’t remember exactly what it was they said, but some sanctimonious ‘question’ like “Have you been saved young man?” pushed my button, and I started arguing with them (ok, maybe yelling.  And I didn’t spit at THEM, just the ground).  They were TOTALLY taken aback for a little kid to get so angry with them.  They packed up and left in a hurry muttering about how rude I was and where my parents were.  I really wish I had video of THAT.  My mother didn’t like door-to-door Christians, but I guarantee, that was totally me. 

Touche. However, I’m not nearly as nice as Richard comes off in his writing here.

More to the point, why would a person who would coach her son to go make her political statement for her be above lying about it after the fact? If one assumes this mother has poor ethics in the first place, then why would one assume she wasn’t just lying in her explanation? What value does her explanation have as evidence?

Fair enough. I just couldn’t resist the opportunity. 😀

I agree. My daughter is 4, and I have no trouble whatsoever believing she could come up with something like this in a few years.

Anyone else have issues with it saying CC is not available.  Help!  I want to know what was said.
 

The evidence I responded to is exactly the same evidence that you are responding to, the boy’s shy reluctance, and the mother’s  repeated, insistent prompting.  Yes, it’s a hypothesis. That’s why I said that I suspect it is possibly what I described. I did not declare that this is the truth. Your hypothesis, your proposed interpretation, is as valid or as invalid as mine.

For the sake of the boy, I hope yours is the correct one. In our initial glee at seeing Bachmann embarrassed for her reprehensible demagogic bigotry, I just think we should not lose touch with the importance of keeping our tactics free of exploitation of innocent people. Mine is a cautionary statement, not an accusation.

Jeez, I can’t wait til poor people start bringing their kids to Newt’s rallies!

I agree with Stev84 and Rich’s comments. I recall arguing with my class teacher at the age of seven that there was no reason to believe in God (I was into astronomy and cosmology at the time). She won that argument by asking the entire class if they thought I was wrong, and my seven year-old peers duly sided with the teacher.

This all happened at boarding school, so you can discount any parental coercion. Kids really do have strong, clear opinions on things, especially if raised in an environment that encourages them to find out things for themselves.