Pop quiz: You’re in a large room lined with books. The center of the room is a hive of activity. Children reduced to pre-linguistic grunting stare into the glow of a dozen screens, fingers jabbing at phantasms flying across their line of sight. What is this place? Is this a reading arcade? Is this a specialized school?
If you’re really not sure, there is one telltale sign you can look for: Do you see a copy of our esteemed Vice President Kamala Harris’s children’s book “Superheroes Are Everywhere”? You do? Then, without a doubt, this a public library! Your tax dollars hard at work.
Like the woman herself, Harris’s politically-motivated picture book for children has all the charm of a dull toothache. On the pages, which you can listen to her read here with her usual eloquence (including commentary on every illustration: “This is me.” “That’s my sister; that’s me.”), you learn that every person in her whole life was a superhero. She’s also a superhero, and you can be a superhero, too!
Personally, if my money is going to go toward having this book displayed in every public library known to man, I’d rather it had been written by Ms. Harris’s current legendary speechwriter. The one who came up with interview answers expounding such wisdom as: “It is time for us to do what we have been doing, and that time is everyday. Everyday it is time for us to agree that there are things and tools that are available to us…” It’s like an elliptical passage from Scripture, so rich with possible meaning!
Let’s consider what her children’s book could have been…
“Superheroes are everywhere. All around us. Around all of us there are people who are heroes. Some might even say superheroes. Heroes that are super. They are your parents—your mom and your dad. Your teachers, your friends. You might even be a superhero. Superheroes are the workers who are doing the work that needs to be done, working to get done what needs to get done today, because they are superheroes.”
Now, to reduce us all to tears, let’s contrast that imagined but entirely believable quotation from the sitting vice president with a lesser-known line of John F. Kennedy’s oft-quoted inaugural address:
“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
This much we pledge — and more.”
Downright stirring! Classical in its construction. A complete sentence! Are you crying yet? Before anyone accuses me of picking on the dear lady responsible for that sappy monstrosity in the children’s section, might I remind you that she came looking for me, smiling that hollow smile of raw, unfettered ambition from a perch of prominent display on the cover of her political propaganda at one library too many? Hopefully, all those superheroes taught little Kamala something important: Don’t start fights you can’t finish.
On a final note, if you wonder whether “Idiocracy” is getting too close for comfort, it is.
