Check out, the Obama Youth League:
And kids, don't forget to visit the White House blog, "Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama."Tomorrow your BFF Barack will be speaking to all the school children in the land! He has asked me to speak to you tonight about what he wants you to do to prepare it ...
And remember: if you hear anybody saying bad or nasty things about Barack, please send me an e-mail with their names and addresses at: reportbadpeoplenow@gmail.com
It's going to be great!
Hat Tip: Camp of the Saints.
(More comments at Memeorandum.)
Don’t we all feel safer now that Obama is so content with his Health Care Plan and Foreign Affairs that he can concentrate on our young kids in school!?
ReplyDeleteThis is so timely! I am currently reading “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” and just finished reading “Mao.” I wonder if President Obama has also read these recently, as we seem to be seeing the same vision for the American people; a leader who is also a cult figure with whom we can all relate. A warm, personable protector, nationalizing health care, willing to spend money we don’t have for our benefit, that is now talking directly to our children, as did Mao in the “re-education of the masses” and Hitler in the “Nazi Youth Movement.” The mainstream media is going joining in the fun, as well. Isn’t it good for the country to get our minds off the Iranians, who have reached out to us and our president to them? and the North Koreans? … now that Obama has made friends with Islamics and the “Holy Koran!” Shouldn’t we agree with our elected president to rid of our nuclear warheads to encourage our reluctant friends? What could happen, while we are playing our video games, texting our friends and watching baseball? After all, Kim Jong Il, sent a personal message to his South Korean counterpart last week “hinting at a new spirit of compromise three months after provoking a crisis with an underground nuclear test.” I believe him, don’t you!? Aren’t we all just tired of being on guard all the time?
Let’s have a new precedent! Shouldn’t we? Letting the president talk to our youth? Directly, while you are at work…not on prime TV….better that you and I are not around.
Or, should we be alarmed. Reading history, I wonder sometimes, if you and I are being duped…and really should be chilled to the bone.
Whoa, hold on there Rusty. First, have you seen Obama's prepared remarks? They're about as inflammatory as your standard stay-in-school PSA, in my opinion. He's not saying anything out of the ordinary here.
ReplyDeleteSecond, in 1991, H. W. Bush gave a televised talk to students where he said many of the same things and no one compared Bush to Hitler and the Hitler Youth. Do you really think that we can compare Hitler Youth with the president telling kids to stay in school? As you may guess, I think that's a far stretch.
Third--and this is sort of a tangential point--I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at about the "Holy Koran." Yes, Obama calls it that when he's speaking to Muslim audiences, but then so did W. Bush. And Obama is holding a ceremony for Eid, but so did W. Bush.
The excitement on the right over this seems a little blown out of proportion if you consider history seriously: many presidents have done similar things (addressing students, talking about the Holy Koran), and I don't think it should be so alarming that Obama does also.
Actually if you consider history seriously then everyone should be concerned. Even the rewritten speech contains the word "I" so many times as to wonder who and what is actually being extolled.
ReplyDeleteMost people were not that concerned with Obama speaking because other Presidents had and kept the political to a minimum. They are political persons and almost everything they do has a political dimension.
The first speech was so blatantly political and the information given to schools so all about the "One" that anyone who does care about history or the future of their children had concerns. If it was as innocuous as some have tried to make out then the WH would not have change a bit of it thereby confirming those concerns.
Rusty,
You are right to be concerned, especially given the lack of historical knowledge obtained from what serves as schools in this country and much of that negatively portrayed as possible. Every parent really needs to read the garbage that is being instilled in their children through school books today. Knowledge about American history is so poor as to score on any objective testing at the lowest level.
Hi Dennis,
ReplyDeleteDid you see Ed Morrisey's breakdown of the speech where he counted the iterations of "I"? According to him, there are more "I"s than anything else. (Ed's math is slightly wrong--run the speech through the word counter that he links to and it comes to 56 "I"s to 61 other words.)
But look at Ronald Reagan's 1988 speech to schoolchildren: you get 25 "I"s to 12 substantive words ("education, responsibility, teachers, parents," etc.).
So, proportionally Obama is referring to himself less than Reagan did.
You may be in the subset of people who think that Obama and Reagan are both wrong for addressing schoolchildren, so I'm not going to accuse you of hypocrisy. I simply want to point out that most people who are hyperventilating over Obama say they loved Reagan--and Reagan actually did the frightening things that they accuse Obama of doing!
(Did you see Morrisey's update where he noted that Reagan touted his political project to schoolchildren? Morrisey ends with:
"To be fair, Obama’s critics (me included) would have erupted in outrage if the President tried tooting his own horn in tomorrow’s speech in this manner. If that would have been wrong, was Reagan wrong for doing this in 1986?" (http://hotair.com/archives/2009/09/07/obama-school-speech-released/).
What do you think Dennis? Was Ronnie wrong in '86?)
Dennis: Where can the rest of us read this mythical "first speech," because I'm pretty certain there was only one released, and that was the one yesterday. If there was a leaked first draft or somethin' that you know about, you ought to allow the rest of us to read it too, rather than giving us your impressions of what it said.
ReplyDeleteAlso, anyone who's read the text or seen the video of St Ronnie's remarks knows that some speeches to school kids have been a little more political than others. (And you know what? I wasn't then and am not now all that bent up about Reagan's remarks, either. People -- including presidents -- have the right to express their political opinions. He won the election, and he had the right to express his vision for the country, especially when asked about it.)
Me, I want kids to be aware of what their elected representatives are saying, whether or not I agree with those reps, politically. Whether it's just a non-partisan bid to work hard in school, or some bit about their vision of America, I think it's important to inspire and engage kids in the governance of this country.
Whether or not you agree with a given president, all of 'em are good role models for kids, in that they once were kids themselves, and they grew up to achieve the highest office in our country. (Only 43 people have done it.)
I'm for more information, not less. If you don't agree with something your kid hears this or some other president say, it's up to you to give them the opposing point(s) of view, rather than to shield them from hearing any views but the ones you wish them to have.
The fact that Rusty is reading about dictators without being brainwashed into thinking they're a good idea shows that it's possible to learn about something without seeing it as an endorsement of that thing. I have every confidence that America's children will be able to hear Obama's words without automatically being mesmerized by them, especially if America's parents can manage to keep their cool and to explain where they believe Obama was wrong in what he said, should there be any disagreement.
Just for the giggles let us look at the democrat party response to the elder Bush speech to children, "President George H.W. Bush delivered a similar speech on October 1, 1991, from Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington DC, the controversy was just beginning. Democrats, then the majority party in Congress, not only denounced Bush's speech -- they also ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate its production and later summoned top Bush administration officials to Capitol Hill for an extensive hearing on the issue." Look it up!
ReplyDeleteIf both Reppy and BenJB just looked at their own history we might be getting somewhere, It is hard to take either of them seriously when they so glaringly dissemble.
One has to be amazed at how selective their memories are when it comes to history.
Dennis:
ReplyDeleteSo no "first speech" then... I thought not.
As far as the Dem reaction to Bush's "non political" speech to school kids, if you thought that was wrong then (as did), you wouldn't be moving in the same direction now. Contrary to your odd claims, I didn't defend the Dem reaction to Bush then, and my earlier comment about Reagan should've made it clear that I would not support that. But seeing as how you obviously need to have it spelled out for you, I thought the Dems were wrong then, and I still do.
If you believe it's "dissembling" to say all presidents, regardless of party, ought to be able to speak to school kids, then so be it. I think you're nuts, but at least you're keeping elected officials away from school kids, leaving them to learn about politics out on the mean streets, that same way you did.
But if it's your position that only Republican presidents should be permitted to spout off to the nation's children (which is what your argument seems to be), then you're revealing yourself and your "issues" with this to be all about your "Republic party" losing an election, and wholly unprincipled by any objective standards.
Hi Dennis,
ReplyDeleteThat is a good point, but I don't think it changes much of the argument. That is, I expect political opponents to oppose each other: Dems would blast Bush 41 for costing money (since Republicans are supposed to be about fiscal responsibility) and Repubs would blast Obama for taking time away from learning (since the ostensible message here is "spend more time learning"). That makes sense to me--and your post about the Democratic opposition to Bush 41's speech is a good reminder of how things get played out in Washington.
What doesn't make sense to me is the varieties of attacks that get made about Obama's speech, like Morrisey's "counting" that a) gets the counting wrong and b) has no control evidence. (That is how this experiment should be run, with some other evidence to compare it to.) You stopped making that argument, so I assume you see where Morrisey was wrong now.
But you haven't answered my yes-or-no question--was Ronald Reagan wrong when he spoke to students and used "I" more than any other word?