Once again, the Republican/conservative noise machine puts itself firmly and squarely on the wrong side of history:
On the very first day of the school year, 12-year-old Mileena Rodriguez was reminded by President Barack Obama himself that hard work can take you places. Mileena listened to Obama’s plea to study hard and stay in school Tuesday, watching along with several of her classmates at Thurgood Marshall Elementary School and students across the country. For all the hubbub among adults over the back-to-school speech, many youngsters took the president’s message to heart.
“He said that we’re the future, and he’s right,” said Mileena, who wants to be a forensic scientist. “That’s a president telling you, `I care about you getting your education.’ Just imagine what kids like us can do if we actually listen.”
…
At Thomas Jefferson High School in Auburn, Wash., a racially and economically diverse district outside Seattle, sophomores listened attentively to the address. Fifteen-year-old Ariana Steele said the message connected with her.
“When you see someone of such power saying what your parents say or your teachers have said, like all your life, it really makes it more powerful to you and it really makes you want to try more,” she said.
And William Geist, a San Francisco fifth-grader who likes to sleep late, listened closely to Obama’s story of studying with his mother at 4:30 a.m.
“Now since I heard this speech, I’m like, `Man, I’ve got to get up early in the morning. I’ve got to get ready for school. I’ve got to do this,’” William said.
WHICH.
WAS.
THE.
POINT.
The insanity of this moment on the right should not be forgotten. Its not just that these people on the right thought Obama might be partisan in a speech to schoolchildren. No, its that they compared it to a Nazi/Soviet/Communist indoctrination brain-wipe! We saw the effects of these crazy people running our country, and yet somehow out of power they’ve grown more deranged.
Any cursory glance at American history shows us that while legislation, war, and economy are major elements of the presidency – it is also the power of the national bully pulpit, the ability to command attention and inspire that is such a huge part of the presidency. That goes for presidents of all parties – from people like Washington to Lincoln to both Roosevelts and beyond.
Our presidents inspire us in times of weakness and in strength. Whether they come from wealth or are one of us, that’s part of the power of the office that we give them at the ballot box.
Maybe its because we haven’t seen it for a while that it’s so shocking to some when President Obama does it.
“The insanity of this moment on the right should not be forgotten.”
Exactly. Republicans and their allies in the “librul” media will quickly try and back-pedal away from their ridiculous claims but if the internet allows us to do anything, it’s to serve as a testament to the sheer insanity that passes as “minority opinion” from Republicans.
The president told kids to work hard and stay in school. The GOP is opposed to this. Because they have absolutely gone off the deep end and have no business being in positions of power any longer. Either that, or because they’re racist clowns who can’t deal with a black man being president. Take your pick.
A preview of tomorrow: more non explanations from the right leaners on this site as to why the speech was detrimental to the younger generation.
Oi, I wish I was joking!
Oh, hey, how about those parents, huh?
How quickly we forget the lunacy of the left.
Cons want their kids to be unemployable so they can terrorize women going into Planned Parenthood every day
Bush made a poltical speech. President Obama didn’t. But LookOverHere Accomplished.
Funny that DK Jamaal a progressive thought the speech was “creepy”, kind of punches a hole in the racist wingnut hysteria that runs rampant on this blog.
Funny that the millions of kids Obama addressed thought the speech was great and completely non political.
But please, keep providing us with links to a site and writers nobody has ever heard of before.
“Funny that DK Jamaal a progressive thought the speech was “creepy”, kind of punches a hole in the racist wingnut hysteria that runs rampant on this blog.”
Hah! I didn’t even have to wait until tomorrow! You are hilarious in the way you try to deflect your own racism, Suicidal!
BTW, you want to know what’s creepy? Your user name. But, hey, don’t let me stop you!
Funny that DK Jamaal a progressive thought the speech was “creepy”, kind of punches a hole in the racist wingnut hysteria that runs rampant on this blog.
The Karl Rove playbook requires rightwing loonies to accuse others of their own failings. That trick never works.
OMG, a PUMA founder who doesn’t like Obama?!? Knock me over with a feather!
Try harder next time Suidical (and remember to flush afterward)
That picture says it all.
Obama inspired millions of adults to vote for him a year ago, and inspired millions of kids yesterday to accept his challenge to be better students and individuals.
This is what a leader does.
The right wingnut politicize-everything paranoia machine never ceases to amaze. I’m still trying to deal with the conservative student club on one campus that seeks to put “liberal” professors on a list. As if students are already hardcore and fixed in their thinking, with no room for questioning left.
Gives me goosebumps, since I used to teach.
The larger picture: what has happened? Clinging to fixed ideologies as a way to cope with a rapidly changing world, the mirror image of Al-Qaeda and other fundamentalisms.
You have to remember that these parents spend all their time, every day, screeching and screaming about what an awful socialist communist who hates America and what it stands for that Obama is. The precise danger for those parents was that their kids were going to watch the speech and say to themselves and say to themselves, “Hey, he’s an ok guy. In some ways, he sounds like my parents and teachers.” Outside of a talk radio/fox news bubble, it’s pretty much impossible to maintain that level of unhinged ire. How much credibility does one really have with your kids if you keep ranting about how Obama wants to kill children and destroy America after they’ve seen that sort of benign, “school is important and listen to your parents” sort of speech? Combine this with the fact that their children are raised in an irony-free zone where the mediocrities of the “stay in school, kids!” message isn’t considered somewhat hilariously cliche or simply a harmless civic banality, and Obama really is undermining the what some parents are teaching their kids.
[...] two from Oliver Willis on the latest controversy: Obama’s indoctrination speech working, insidiously compelling kids to stay in school, and a peek inside the awful socialist degenerate [...]
Bush made a poltical speech.
He did? Where’s the transcript?
There’s some info here and I hardly see anything that is political so once again you’re just accepting what somebody said. Dick Gephardt said it was political so you say it was political. Typical.
http://volokh.com/posts/1252117357.shtml
When the GOP shouts to hold hearings about this speech, then you can equivocate. Until then, singling out a tiny percentage of people who started talking the whole indoctrination/Soviet and once again falsely making them the majority is old hat.
Just read Poppy’s speech at Jay’s link above. That was a nice speech. Nothing political about it. It was even, uh, kinda inspiring; I liked his emphasis on personal responsibility. WTG 41.
If there’s more to the story, I’d love to hear it, but based on what I’ve seen so far it looks like Democrats tried to make political hay out of a harmless speech, just like Republicans are trying to do now.
It’s kind of SOP for the party that’s out of power. Sometimes the outrage appears righteous, when (for example) the party in power actually is engaged in skullduggery, but it’s not really about anyone’s misbehavior, real or imagined. It’s about power and persuasion.
When Bush 41 made his speech, he was coming up on the 1992 election cycle. He had long fashioned himself as supportive of education, but hadn’t actually gotten around to doing anything about it.
Congressional Dems argued that his speech was a fig leaf to cover his inaction during the rest of his term.
The Dems did not declare that Mr. Bush was trying to indoctrinate children or expose them to his radical agenda.
The question to ask is whether the pre-speech outrage claimed by the wingnut community was at all justified, or only some prefabricated teabagger soap opera.