Obama and the Race Baiters
(The Art of Distraction as Illustrated by Harold Hill and “Lida Rose”)
In the 1962 musical-comedy, The Music Man, grifter Harold Hill cons an entire Iowa town by whipping up a false crisis (the moral decline of its young men) and championing a false solution (a boy’s marching band). He then bilks the town of money for instruments and uniforms while only pretending to follow through with his plan. The Mayor, however, suspects Hill of fraud and tasks the four members of the town council to investigate him. But whenever they manage to catch Hill in person to question him, Hill just begins humming the opening bars of “Lida Rose” and the four men immediately transform like Pavlov’s dog into a barbershop quartet, blissfully crooning “Lida Rose” in four part harmony while Hill slips away unnoticed.
Today in America, a dark and dystopian version of this theme is unfolding before our eyes. The Iowa town is all of America, Harold Hill is Obama and the Democrats, the false crisis is the anomalous death of George Floyd, the false solution is ‘defunding the police’ (an uber-provocative diversion they know is unwinnable), the Mayor is President Trump, and the Town Council/Barbershop Quartet is the conservative movement, including especially conservative media and pundits tasked with exposing Obamagate to the public.
Trump (the Mayor) has alleged criminal fraud by the Democrats (the Russian Collusion Hoax), and just as the conservatives are about to make it the centerpiece of a world-changing public discussion (upon the release of the Flynn Transcripts proving his case that the Trump administration was the victim of constitution-shattering abuse of power by Obama), the Democrats trick the conservatives into singing a race-centered equivalent of “Lida Rose” by launching race riots, literally the day before the release.
Suddenly, the criminality of the Obama team is forgotten, and the Town Council, and all the citizens are all singing their tune, cluelessly swept back up into the Marxist con game while a smug and smirking Harold Hill just picks up where he left off in his scheme to “fundamentally transform America.”
I am publishing this little reminder as a public service message, because unlike the redemptive ending of The Music Man, this dystopian version, “The Riot Man” does not have a happy ending, and we’re doomed to find that out in real time if the “Town Council” and the Citizenry don’t realize they’ve dropped the ball on by far the biggest (and still continuing) scandal in American history.
