Obama's speech to students today

[jdlea]

Originally Posted by JoeRedskin

Based on what?

Look - I think any "outrage" over this was dumb. The man's the President and wanted to call the nation's children to study. Further, he did so in what appeared to be a non-partisan fashion. Excellent. I think it should be a mandatory part of every President's term.

But let's not be naive here. The country is polarized and the media (left and right) love to stir things up and overhype any controversy (good ratings don'cha know). The left media likes to portray the right as a bunch of dumb hicks incapable of rational thought and the right media likes to portray the left as a bunch of fellow travellers out to destroy capitalism and democracy. All it takes is a few idiots to say "He's trying to brainwash the kids" for it to play right into these two lines of thought. That's what the "controversy" was about - it had nothing to do with race.

Eh...I think saying "it had nothing to do with race" is painting with a broad brush. My future mother-in-law is a teacher in Southern Louisiana and I'm not going to get into specifics, but there were teachers in those schools saying that they would refuse to air the speech because of things other than the man's politics, more to the point, because of the color of his skin. There have been letters to the editor about how it would have been better if Satan himself were to have addressed the children...are you f*cking kidding me?

I have to say, I don't believe Louisiana is unique in this regard. I'm certain there are a lot of school systems in the South riled up about this one. I'm positive there are places in South Carolina (I used to live there) who had the same sorts of issues with the airing of the speech. And what would be the argument against it? "How dare he tell my kids to stay in school?!...The nerve of him to promote hard work!"

I understand that some of the outrage is over the fact that there are Republicans who don't agree with a Dem "trying to push his agenda on kids," but let's be realistic and not stick our collective heads in the sand; it was in the minority, but plenty of the outrage was due to the color of his skin.