by Steve Thorngate
President Obama spoke to students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia today, and his remarks were simulcast in schools around the country. The president’s message to American schoolchildren? Show up to school. Pay attention, do your work and be responsible. It will help you get ahead.
Religious right leader Tony Perkins was anticipating something a tad more controversial. The Family Research Council president went on TV late last week to bash the upcoming first-day-of-school speech and the president’s education policy, and FRC’s Washington Update noted that the administration’s move was unprecedented. (It wasn’t. For more, see Dan Nejfelt.)
Now that the president’s given his predictable and inoffensive speech, you’d think FRC would post something acknowledging this, maybe even taking credit for pressuring the White House into changing its plans and planning an event that all Americans can embrace. You’d be wrong. The organization’s home page currently leads with a Perkins piece explaining how even a bland, policy-free speech is a problem because of the past affiliations of Department of Education leaders Arne Duncan and Kevin Jennings. If this argument surprises you simply because it doesn’t really make any sense, then you’re not that familiar with FRC’s brand of Christian leadership.
Meanwhile, Glenn Beck and other right-wing types finally succeeded this weekend in pushing out the administration’s green jobs czar—Van Jones, a groundbreaking African-American environmental activist and a top expert on green jobs. Score one for vindictive politics and zero for green jobs innovation, for the diversification of the environmental movement, for the environment itself.
With a loyal opposition like this, who needs enemies?
Monday’s roundup
14 minutes ago
7 comments:
what shock? Preposterous headline.
You folk make a fuss about every bloody thing that goes on!
Breathe in. Breathe out.Relax.
It will be just fine. If not take an aspirin; the pain will go away.
If it still persists, try Ayurvedic remedies. Adam and Eve tried it and it is recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures that it worked.
Probably it is unrealistic to imagine that people will read posts before they comment, but it would be nice.
It is also unrealistic to think that people who want to criticize will look for real things to criticize in the President before they open their yap.
The Left did the same to Bush I in '91. As usual both the extreme left and right are hypocritical.
I think the president should be allowed to address our school children. While the hoopla appears to be unnecessary in hindsight, you admit the message was changed after it became public.
Going forward if its clear parents will have the opportunity to review the message prior and give parents the opportunity to decide whether its appropriate, much of this attention would be avoided.
I also can understand the concern felt by parents of giving Obama access to their kids. His broad demonization of the much of the American population including the parents of schoolkids has been unprecedented.
I think it was a tremendous compliment to Obama and his abilities that the Right wing critics feared that 15 minutes of his talking to their children could undo their whole life time of indoctrination of their own children.
Wonder is what Obama said was his first draft?
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