Pictures of Him Smiling

From Kansas City comes a story of two elementary-school biographies of Barack Obama getting pulled from a Catholic school's library.

Priest Ron Elliott reportedly received complaints that the library of the St. John LaLande Catholic School of Blue Springs, Missouri, contained two books about Barack Obama. Who doesn't adhere to the Vatican line on abortion. (Neither do the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the US Constitution, which is what a US President is actually supposed to preserve, protect, and defend, but that's my idiosyncratic interpretation.)

Elliott pulled both books off the library shelves, examined them, and determined that "they don’t touch on anything controversial at all. . . . They’re just about him growing up, with pictures of him smiling.”

Nevertheless, Elliott "plans to return the books in February or March after the dust settles." Because there's no reason that kids at that school might be interested in Obama in, say, late January.

I get the feeling that Elliott himself isn't eager to remove the books. Rather, he seems to be acting to assuage some unnamed vocal parishioners, reassuring them and the world of his own anti-abortion views while preparing to reshelve the books. But again, that might be my idiosyncratic interpretation.

Above, a T-shirt of superhero artist Alex Ross's image of Obama, available through Stylin' Online.