samcol

I think it's in the realm of possibility that it was made less political.

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It's time for the president to hand over his nobel peace prize.

Willravel

Right, but it's also possible that this is the original, and has remained unchanged regardless of partisan attacks. In fact, I'd call that the null theory on this one.

hotandheavy

I've read the speech now, and if my kids don't see it at school, we will sit down and watch the video. It's an inspiring speech, one every student can get something from.

Thanks for posting the direct link Will.

biznatch

Yes, but I see the same thing happening with conservative's children. My mother in law believes Obama wasn't born in America, and her 9-year old kid repeats all of the stuff passed around the anti-Obama blogs.
She is home-schooled, but not appropriately. I'm not against homeschooling, but she is learning stuff that is 100x times more politically biased than she would be in school, and lagging behind in terms of other important aspects of education.

I'm not attacking your own beliefs, and I'm not saying you wouldn't be a good teacher for your kids. I'm just saying there shouldn't be an irrational fear about what the President will tell children in school. He's not gonna try and convince them why his ideas on healthcare are the right ones, because kids will listen to their parents anyway, 90% of the time, at least until their mid-teens, and often much later.

By the way, I do think it's great you're concerned about what your kids learn in school. Many parents are not, and you seem to care a great deal, in addition to being very involved with children (girl scouts). I really respect that.

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dogzilla

I don't have any serious problems with his speech, but I do with the agenda around it. I read several news articles which claimed part of the associated lesson plan was for students to write letters explaining how they could help Obama. That is a bit out of line.

It seems like Obama's education department now realizes that since they have rewritten the lesson plan so the students are just supposed to write a letter about their own goals.

Obama urges kids to pay attention in school - White House- msnbc.com

Duncan's department has also taken heat for proposed lesson plans distributed to accompany the speech.

On Sunday, the secretary acknowledged that a section about writing to the president on how students can help him meet education goals was poorly worded. It has been changed.

"We just clarified that to say write a letter about your own goals and what you're going to do to achieve those goals," Duncan said on CBS' "Face the Nation."

Willravel

I'd really like to see those articles to see if they have merit.

samcol

Hopefully they won't have to do that as a lesson plan.

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It's time for the president to hand over his nobel peace prize.

Willravel

That's just silly. Of course that won't be a part of any lesson plan. In fact, that was carried out by private people of their own free will. The fact that this video is still making the rounds speaks in volumes about unsupported paranoia.

flstf

I really don't think this is such a bad thing, trying to get students involved. Besides President Obama wouldn't be the first President to ask children to write them letters.
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/im...991.speech.pdf

roachboy

the stupidity of this is kinda awesome in it's own special way.

what i'm curious about, though, is the effects that the amount of press coverage this sort of thing is getting has not in discrediting it, but rather in legitimating it.
it seems that the illusion of "objectivity" has come to serve some really strange causes.
remember the "objectivity" of the press during the protests against the way in iraq? the 10 conservative counterdemonstrators would get their positions outlined with almost the same amount of column-space as the positions of the 200,000 people who were out against the war. so "objectivity" now consists of presenting more than one position as if they were all operating on the same level in terms of coherence. by doing that, the press is basically creating an impression of coherence rather than reflecting one.

these actions are about gaining and holding periods of time within news cycles. built into them, then, is an assumption that the coverage is part of the action.
maybe after years and years of well-financed far right populist talking heads repeating the "liberal press" mantra, the press itself, heroes that they are, have come to see their hands as being collectively tied. or maybe because the press is private and so an advertising medium, business logic dictates that "news" coverage not be critical of actions which originate from the right. or maybe, as is the case with fox for example, the corporation is itself explicitly a conservative political machine.

no matter the explanation, we are really not being well served by the press here.
no matter the explanation, the press bears considerable responsibility for legitimating lunacy like "protect your child from the evil obama speech, full of pinko sentiments like education is important, stay in school."

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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Willravel

Conservatism is just the skin, just like so called liberalism of the left. It's all just corporatism. All hail the mighty monopoly, for it's convinced me that my life should be in debt, that I should tune in and I should spend. The news coverage is actually a tiny symptom when you look at the big picture. It's just one of the many medias that has been enveloped into the "keep the stupid poor people fighting about meaningless nonsense so that the rich can get richer" scheme. And look how well it's worked. We were barely even discussing the public option when the "Now you must argue about Obama's school speech" order came down from our well financed corporate media and we fell in line. And the American Gordon Gekkos pulling the strings get all the more richer.

It's not right vs. left. I wonder if it's EVER been right vs. left. It's arguing as a sport between nearly distinguishable teams. It's not even stupid vs. smart. It's stupid vs. stupid with a little crazy mixed in.

mixedmedia

thank you for putting into the form of legitimate theory, that which will be one of the major touchpoints of the manifesto I will write when I am old.

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PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

ottopilot

Thank you will. This is much ado about nothing. Another distraction, another diversion. If you are so afraid to allow your child to view an address by the president, then you probably lack serious parenting skills. This an excellent learning opportunity whether you support the president or not. It's how you handle your interpretation of the message and what example you make for child when you reinforce or counter that message... with informed civility or not.

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Willravel

If I had a nickel every time some of the smartest people I know, myself included, bought into a fake controversy that's clearly intended only as a distraction, I could be one of those evil corporatists that controls the media. The speech is nice, it has some pleasant platitudes, but it's certainly not worth our limited attentions during a time when our economy is on the brink, the environment is collapsing around us, and we're engaged in two military conflicts that are entirely unnecessary. Has 24-hour news stripped us of our ability to prioritize catastrophes?

Charlatan

I keep reading these threads and all I get is a headache... that and a strong feeling that the US needs to sort out its shit. The US is facing some serious challenges and they are getting side-tracked by the most idiotic distractions.

The anger and (self) destructiveness is appalling.

__________________
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- Old Man Luedecke

FuglyStick

The conservatives won't be happy unless the country fails.

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AZIZ! LIGHT!

Willravel

It seems like just yesterday that they were saying the same thing about us.

Bill O'Rights

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ottopilot

Sounds like a conservative estimate. To Will and Charlatan's point, the distraction here is habitual. We are poised and ready to engage in political battle over a few trees when an ominous forest surrounds us. The constant partisanship distracts us from drilling down into what we should be paying attention to. If we believe these distractions are intentional, then by whom... and to what end? ...perhaps questions for another thread.

To your point... there are probably a very small number of conservatives that truly want the country to fail. Probably proportional to the number of liberals that want to impose a communist dictatorship. Who has the most to gain in promoting such views? The timing of such controvercy always seems suspicious when so much focus is placed on so little substance. They come and go, one after another... like songs on a fiddle whlie Rome burns.

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samcol

Adding people to ignore makes for great political debate. At least you win by default when the opposition is gone.

How childish is it to ignore people you disagree with?

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It's time for the president to hand over his nobel peace prize.

FuglyStick

...

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samcol

All of your responses have read similarly. No substance other than Obama is the supreme leader and we should obey him.

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It's time for the president to hand over his nobel peace prize.

Willravel

To review, everyone looked at the shiny controversy, many conservatives... or rather anti-leftists, played their part in losing their shit, and everyone else responded by paying attention to them. The speech is actually incredibly tame, and the anti-leftists are now suggesting (despite having no evidence) that the speech was changed. Tomorrow the corporate powers will tell Fox News and Drudge to direct the anti-leftists to do something else either truly silly or incredibly intellectually dishonest and everyone's heads will turn.

Actually, I think I can already see the next thing. Apparently yet another fake Kenyan birth certificate (from the mentally disturbed Orly Taitz) is making the rounds. OMGZ! LOOK AT TEH FAKE BIRTH CERTIFICATE! YOU MEAN CERTIFICATIONZ?! SAME THING!! NUH UH, ITZ CERTIFICATIONZ OF LIVE BIRTH!!
There have been 320 coalition deaths in 2009 so far, which is already higher than any of the previous 6 years we've been in Afghanistan. No one knows why we're there. I've not heard from jorgelito since he posted that he wanted to join the Navy. If I were religious, I'd be praying that I didn't scan by his real name on the casualty list. It's labor day and unemployment rate is at a 26 year high—that is, this is the worst unemployment in my entire life—, at 9.7% officially. Corporate interests are somehow managing to endanger a public healthcare option even with Democratic control of the White House, House, and Senate; just another reminder that democracy isn't always democratic. The US has 5% of the world's population and 23.6% of its prisoners. We've just suffered several instances of domestic terrorism, and the hatred that fueled them is growing.

A little perspective.

Ananas

I agree with the points made by Roachboy and WillRavel.

Here's a country that's lost millions of jobs in the last few years, yet cannot see that more and better education will bring this country forward and return it to its former position. The loss of education, cutbacks in almost every school district, the inability of parents to afford college educations for their children, all that stuff, needs to be addressed now. The US cannot afford to fall (further) behind other nations on the education front. In a few short years we will go from a nation that accepted JFK's challenge to put Americans on the moon to a nation that believes the moon is a leftist/socialist deathstar raining radiation upon its collective head.

Here's a country with a few parents protesting a speech by its President for feck's sake about education. It's the same man who said he wanted to make improving education one of the primary goals of his presidency. Don't want their kids to watch their President, but no problem with what they watch for their average 5 hours of dailyTV, video games, movies, etc.

This country had no problem listening to previous Presidents, and FDR's Fireside chats before and during WWII were welcomed by the whole nation (even those who opposed him) because people wanted to hear what their President said before leveling any criticism.

It's embarrassing to see that the US is inundated with people who can be so easily misdirected and mislead by the fat cats whose bottom lines are being rightfully questioned.

All those protesting need to ask themselves (and their children) a few questions:
1. Has your school district reduced its budget, laid off teachers & other employees? How is the condition of the physical plant of the school itself?
2, Does your child's school even offer art, music, physical education, foreign language, or other "non-essential" classes anymore?
3. Where does your child's school rank in national testing levels (reading, math, writing)?
4. What's the student-teacher ratio in your child's school?
5. Have you learned by now that not every black person is a gun-toting, drug-dealing, welfare-cheating, ebonics-talking, crotch-grabbing rap artist shiftless thug?

You need to educate yourself.


PS: Samcol: I don't get the meaning of your avatar. Could you explain it please? Thanks.

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it's gritty

samcol

I use it because the image is being banned on social networks and in public. It is an expression of free speech.

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It's time for the president to hand over his nobel peace prize.

Willravel

Oddly enough, the image was created by history student (and Democratic Dennis Kucinich supporter) Firas Alkhateeb as simply an attempt to do something interesting with photoshop. The image was taken without permission, changed slightly (like adding "fascism"), and then became a popular among anti-leftists as a sort of shallow and unclear critique of Obama, or more obviously a guilt by association fallacy in picture form.
Obama Joker artist unmasked: A fellow Chicagoan | Top of the Ticket | Los Angeles Times

Ananas

Okay. So it's a form of protest, or an expression of free speech. I was just trying to connect the meaning of the Batman image, which I viewed as a symbol of anarchy tinged with insanity, with President Obama. I guess my question really was why you would connect Obama with Batman.

~Nevermind -- I read Will's post.

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it's gritty

Willravel

Why do we fall, sir? So that we can learn to pick ourselves back up again.

Ananas

ha!

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it's gritty

pan6467

I'd like to see a link to this or a you tube..... I'm calling bullshit. I was in school the Reagan years and I do not recall him EVER addressing just the children.

As for Obama..... I have an issue with it. there is no reason to politicize the children. If the parents wanted or want the children to watch, have it after school, WITH the parents attending.

I have serious issues whether it had been Reagan, Clinton, either Bush or ANY president to come addressing children at school when the parents can not be there (as most have to work).

Kids grow up fast enough there is no reason whatsoever.

I was guilty of it with Bush and I'll be guilty of it now..... this is fucking Naziism. Stalin, Hitler, Mao and so on, ALL went after the kids.

Everything I held near and dear to me in the Democratic Party has been trashed and it has become worse than the GOP.

I wish to Hell there was a truly viable 3rd party.

__________________
I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

dippin

Holy hyperbole, batman


In any case, ask and you shall receive:

November 14, 1988:






full transcript:

Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session With Area Junior High School Students

FuglyStick

thanx dippin

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jewels

The latest in my area:

Brevard County said will show the speech to students, but parents may have their children opt out of seeing it if they wish.
Lake County will tape the speech, and it will be up to the teachers and schools to show it if they want. Parents can have their children opt out.
Marion County will leave the decision to each individual school. Students can opt out of the speech by bringing a note from their parent Tuesday morning.
Flagler, Orange, Osceola, Seminole and Volusia counties will let teachers and principals decide if they want to air the address in their classrooms.

That all sounds a lot more political than the actual speech. I wonder if it's because we're in the bible belt.

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mixedmedia

They're not showing the speech down here in Collier County...they are linking it to their website. I'm not surprised at all, though, Naples is a really conservative community.
With all the communities opting out of showing the speech, I really just have to laugh at the theory that our schools are uber liberal places where our kids are being brainwashed with socialism.
This country ought to be fucking ashamed of itself. I am.

__________________
Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

pig

charlatan: I almost posted something similar last night, but I just couldn't get up the pithy amount of energy required to type it out. I think I made it as far as "These threads make my brain hurt," and then I went into "fuck it" mode. Hope everyone is doing well.

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pan6467

Thanks Dippin... don't remember those, don't think my school showed them and I definitely do not remember anything being said. These were broadcast in schools, elementary, junior high and senior highs right? Not just to some kids in an audience and select schools?

I still believe it is wrong. I don't believe in politicizing children, especially at school. It still smells of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and so on. Call it what you will, but the past has taught us the great tyrants in the modern age have used the children to get across their "message".

I find it funny how shows like the Outer Limits, Twilight Zone, and so on written by survivors of Naziism, stalinism and so on warned us of the very things we are going through today.

It's not just this president it's been going on for awhile, it's just hitting its stride now.

It's funny to watch the Dems swallow the piss now and believe it's lemonade. There is no difference in power mongering between the 2 parties.

The GOP said "we need to start controlling the net." The Dems yelled foul, what of our freedoms? Now, Obama says it and the Dems are ok with it and the GOP are screaming civil rights.

If you step back and stop playing partisanship, you'll see both parties wanting to take away the same rights, wanting to invade our freedoms and grab all the power they can over our lives, they just do it in slightly different ways, styles and wordings but what they want is the same POWER. Obama is nothing more or less than the figurehead puppet Reagan and W were. I truly believe in the past 25 years the only president that wasn't a puppet was Clinton and that's why even his own party turned on him.

__________________
I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

Baraka_Guru

No, I disagree. Here is one take on this aspect that I agree with:

Nothing to fear but politics itself | BlueRidgeNow.com | Times-News Online | Hendersonville, NC

And the closing remark of the article puts it into perspective, especially considering what we now know about the speech:
Just because a politician aims to get a "message" across to children, it doesn't automatically mean they're trying to build an army of fascist youth.

I think American schoolchildren need some serious inspiration today. Haven't they fallen far enough behind already?

__________________
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Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
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roachboy

you know what's really absurd about all this? we just passed through a period that it's hard not to see as a neo-fascist one. what characterizes fascism? a nationalist ideology predicated on an identification of the "real" people with the person of a Leader, which presupposes a tight co-ordination of opinion through a top-down media apparatus (there were no fascisms before there was radio. in the united states, it's television mostly) which enables a sense of immediate identification with the Leader who is the embodiment of the State---which is typically in a state of more or less "total mobilization" around a military project that involves an Enemy that is both within and without, everywhere and nowhere, the actions of which Threaten the Real People with annihilation---a threat that justifies the state of total mobilization, that enables the identifications to take shape.

*that* is not a bad outline of what fascism looks like. and *that* is a pretty fair outline of the "war on terror".

this is one of many reasons why i see conservative anxiety about obama as pathological. they've found themselves dragged from the Happy Place of anxiety about "terrorism" to the unhappy place of trying to muddle through the aftermath of the bush administration itself.

this is quite apart from bigger problems that may well have been triggered by the Epic Incompetence of the bush people, problems that may well result in the unravelling of the american empire as it's been constructed since world war 2, as it mutated under the figleaf of "globalizing capitalism"

what the right is doing is acting out. the underlying basis for this is a simple inversion of the structure built around the Leader during that Happy Valley Trip of the war on "terror"

again, the problem really is that there's little in the way of perspective that's being provided by the main opinion co-ordination mechanisms. so this acting out seems somehow a legitimate form of politics.

meanwhile, i expect that much of the planet thinks---again---that the united states has flipped its shit and is devolving at speed into some bizarre-o collective delusion-space.
and conservatives, who seem incapable of not conflating their own political gain with the Interests of the Real America that they like to pretend they and they alone embody, continue to drive us all further and further into the same downward spiral put into motion in spades by the endgame of the bush period.

it really is lunacy.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Paq

I've been routinely shocked at how people are reacting to anything the president does. Bush got a free ride compared to anything obama has gone through. but we have a liberal media, so what gives....

I routinely put up stuff for debate on my facebook page and people truly shock me with the vitriol towards the president. I've gotten to the point where i can't do it anymore bc it just gives me a headache and an eyetwitch. I spend 90% of my time debunking things people try to tell me. My brother seems to be in touch with the flyover states, it seems, bc he will email me the most retarded shit ever...then i'll see it on the news later bc some freaking station decided to give it credence..then it catches on.

And to think, just last year, it was liberals who wanted the country to fail...

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dippin

What I particularly love is the cognitive dissonance that at the same time claims that if Obama talks about staying in school he will be completely ineffectual because the kids won't pay attention, but if he talks about politics he will brainwash every kid into volunteering for the contemporary version of Hitler's youth.