Concerning the chilling video in this post, several readers emailed last night to write, "Did you stay to the end to see who produced it?" I missed the fact that Harpo Productions - Oprah - produced that video. On that note, I received this email, about the "I Pledge" video, from a teacher:

I showed my caustic remarks on it [the video] to some of my students and they loved it. But then they were the same group who noticed an uncomfortable parallel to what happened during Tuesday's Obama Inauguration Day festivities and the film we have been viewing in their World History class -- Triumph of the Will -- Leni Riefenstahl's masterpiece of cinematic propaganda deifying Adolf Hitler at the 1934 National Socialist German Workers Party Rally in Nuremberg.