The San Francisco Boys Chorus and the San Francisco Girls Chorus are heading to D.C. to sing at the inauguration. I had the opportunity to hear them perform yesterday at San Francisco City Hall, and their singing is just beautiful. They look lovely too, in their crisp uniforms -- although it is funny the way in which the girls, who are older than the boys, tower over them.

I found their choice of songs a little dreary. America the Beautiful is, of course, always lovely to hear, but I would have preferred some tempo changes. Instead, song after song had the same slow, hymn-like quality. It would have been nice to have something a little rousing, such as a George M. Cohan song. That's just a stylistic preference, though, and not worthy of much consideration.

What is worthy of thought, though, is one of the songs that the children sang -- a special composition that puts to music the words of Obama's acceptance speech. (See this news video, beginning at about 1:16., which explains a little about the song, or this article which quotes from it.) Aside from finding the song musically irritating, since it was pompous without being attractive, I was also completely unnerved by the level of worship brought to Obama's essentially banal verbal stylings.

As the children lent their beautiful voices to this boring song, and the San Francisco audience listened in rapt, reverent silence, I wanted to holler out, "People, this cult of personality is wrong. Obama has done nothing yet. His mere existence is not worthy of this level of worship."

All I could think of, as I was staring at the crowd around me, was the cult of personality accorded Kim Jong-Il. There, too, children mindlessly parrot their great leader's words, as the audience, kept in control by guns, torture and starvation, also accords the performers rapt and reverent attention.

Creepy, creepy, creepy.

Cross posted at Bookworm Room