Is there a double standard in this Obama school address controversy?

Great Debates
1

The dust up over the president giving a good and simple message to students this week just strikes me as the most bizarre thing I’ve seen in a summer of pretty bizarre political behavior. The fact the so many people are now seeing propaganda in the most innocent places really tells me something about the political mood in the country right now, it is not good at all.

The question is this, if this were George W. Bush who were telling kids to stay in school and think about how they can be better citizens, would the response be anything close? How about Ronald Reagan at the height of the “Morning in America” rhetoric, would we see that as propaganda? It seems to me like the general rule is that it is awesome for the president to address and inspire students, he is the president after all. Of course everything he says is going to be completely cookie-cutter, but it’s still awesome.

I do suspect a double standard. This was confirmed in my mind when I saw Rick Santorum on Fox News last night addressing the issue. He said that it is in fact this president the creates the problem, he referenced George H.W. Bush’s address to students and said that was fine because he was a “grandfather type” and not an inspirational speaker. I kid you not.

So are adults just getting all paranoid because of the current political struggles or are Republicans really just not keen on their kids hearing from a Democratic president?

2

This is just ordinary political theater. The Democratic leadership did much the same thing when Bush I spoke at a junior high. Majority leader Gephardt denounced it as “paid political advertising” and two House committees sent letters to the Department of Education demanding information.

(The above cite goes to a conservative website, which of course is putting its own spin on the matter, but it’s quoting an article from the Washington Post).

3

I think the leaders were being silly to criticize Bush, but at least they waited until after the speech so that no one was theatening to keep kids home from school. There really is a touch of hysteria in the pre-action to President Obama’s speech.

And I do wish that the Department of Education had sufficient funding.

4

Oh, it’s even worse than you think!

5

Well, at least he didn’t bore a captive audience with “My Pet Goat” and stare blankly like a moron while thousands of Americans died in a dastardly attack he ignored the warnings about.

6

Most of it was about the $27k Bush spent on it, though.

7

Leadership be damned, what about actual party members?
Were any of the Democratic faithful at the time stupid enough to pull their kids from school rather than subject them to Bush I, or is that just a Republican thing?

8

And the fact is was done at the beginning of the campaign.
The right has now moved from stupid to psychotic.

I saw one woman complaining that somehow Obama’s speech was going to conflict with what they talked about at home. Unless they talk about how useless education is, I guess is that how they talk about Obama being the devil incarnate, and a stirring speech about the need for working hard in school is going to contradict that. I wonder if this is really a lot of the problem.

9

There may be a double standard. There certainly is a bunch of hysterical nonsense.

I saw a young mother crying on CNN this morning over Obama addressing her children, as if just thinking of such a horrible fate moved her to tears. Sheesh!

10

Of course it’s a double standard. I don’t see how anyone can argue otherwise. The Democratic response to Bush I’s address stemmed from its expense to the tax payer, not for its content. And at least they waited till after the speech was delivered to bitch.

The current frenzy is outrageous not only because no one has even heard what the president is going to say, but because these wacko parents are making Obama out to be a boogeyman in front of their children’s very eyes. They are indoctrinating with fear and lies. Now let’s say the president’s message is as harmless as I think it will be. Will the kids sitting at home or standing in the hallways with their hands over their ears ever know? No. All they’ll know is that Obama is a Bad Man because Mama and Daddy say so. They not only don’t they get a chance to hear a message directed at them from the most powerful person in the world, but their parents have tainted him forever. My parents had great disdain for Reagan, and they didn’t hide their contempt for him from us kids, but at least we got to see him on TV so we could see what all the ruckus was about. That’s how you build a critical mind. Guess critical thinking isn’t on the conservative agenda. Being a Fox TV-watching, Rush Limbaugh-dittohead sheeple is, though.

We were told repeatedly by the Right during Bush II’s reign that we should respect the Office and support it at all costs, because the president has nothing but the country’s best interest at heart, even when he makes mistakes. And what did they base that assertion on? Blowing up a third world country that was no threat to the US? But when Obama explicitly tells us he wants to tell the kiddies to stay in school and do well (you know, those things black people aren’t supposed to excel in), he’s spreading propaganda and inculcating young minds with liberal policies. Suddenly the president DOESN’T have the country’s best interest at heart, even though everyone constantly complains about how crappy the American educational system is. He wants to kill the country by making kids accountable for their own education. Personal accountability is apparently a socialist thing, not one of the hallmarks of conservatism. Freakin’ bizzaro world, folks.

It makes no sense. It’s so unfathomable it’s like a storyline from a bad novel. Too bad I can’t return the real world back to the library and check out another one.

11

The problem was not Obama speaking to the kids. The problem was that in the “lesson plan” that the Department of Education (with help from the White House) sent along with the speech, they asked the kids to

Now, that’s far too similar to the North Koreans making their kids write about how they can help their “Dear Leader”. Yes, I know the White House didn’t mean that, but that’s what it sounds like.

The WH finally woke up to the fact that this request could easily be misinterpreted, and they changed it. Unfortunately, their message was not “Yes, we see how that could be misunderstood, so to make it clear what we really meant, we’ve changed it. Thanks for pointing that out.”

Instead, their message was on the order of “You’re all a bunch of stupid idiots for not reading what we meant instead of what we said” … and they changed it. If people were so stoopid, why did they change it? That just makes them look devious.

It’s the same as the WH response to the “Death Panel” nonsense from the right. Rather than saying “Hey, we know it’s a very complex and confusing health care bill, sorry for the misunderstanding, let’s re-write it so it is perfectly clear”, they said “You’re all idiots under the sway of Sarah Palin. How ignorant can you be!”

I know that these complaints from the right have been way overblown … and I also see that the response from the White House and the left have been to insult the intelligence of those who misunderstood the confusing messages. That’s a very, very foolish tactic.

Look, the White House was clearly foolish and mis-spoke in this case, that’s why they changed the lesson. If they had just been up front about being wrong, apologized, and fixed it, instead of getting all huffy and insulting people’s intelligence and talking about the “silly season”, this would have faded away. Admit your mistakes and move on.

Both sides have played their part in this idiocy.

12

Speaking of this: http://studentwalkout.com/

13

Except the death panels were a blatant lie, and the language was obvious to anyone who didn’t want to make Democrats look evil. Similarly, “help the President” is clear in context: he wants you to succeed in school and get good grades, so you should work and study hard.

14

How are the North Koreans suddenly the gold standard by which American behavior must be judged? Did someone send out a memo? To those of us who did not get the memo, this sounds like sheer lunacy, and you know what? We’re right, again.

15

Why is helping the president improve national educational goals such a scary proposition? I guess I can see the narcissism in having the president as the object of focus rather than the nation (as in, “help the country” rather than “help the president”). But socialist? Gimme a break. It’s only socialist if you’ve already made up your mind that he’s a socialist.

And yes, it is idiotic to go batshit crazy over this. Given the townhall uproars, the “Obama Ain’t No 'Murican” rumors and the general hostility that Obama has faced from the Right ever since he became a contender for the Office, I’d be a little impatient too if people had a problem with a do-gooder message about staying in school and making good grades. The Right is not letting up at all, so why should the White House be all sweetness and light? Those who are disrespectful don’t deserve respect.

And seeing as how the curriculum is optional anyway, I think that’s a red herring. These people are hysterical because the Enemy is deigning to address their precious children, period. They are praying that our president fails, and this is just the warm up for them. Next week, it will be something else. Just you wait and see.

I’m not in full support of Obama about everything, but really. I just want the stupid people to shut up already and wait till he actually screws up before they start crying on CNN.

16

A double standard is better than no standard at all.

Any of my students who skip class that day are just begging for an “appropriate make-up assignment.”

17

I think we should teach the controversy. :smiley:

18

Hmmmmmm I think a better tact would have been to simply remind those who were blowing things out of proportion that the lesson plan was optional and it was about helping the president improve the country for all it’s citizens through good education.

While I agree it’s a bad tactic to insult the intelligence of those who decide to embrace these absurdities I do think the WH needs to call out those who like to instigate and encourage them. Stand up for reason and don’t answer every absurd challenge. Call the political fear mongering for what it is just as they have with the health care issues. Encourage, without harsh criticism, the media to cover the relevant facts and not give rise to cheap controversy.

19

I wonder how they’ll react when other Christians such as the Sojourners strongly disagree.

20

Cosmodan and others, thanks for the thoughts.

The problem in this case was that the White House clearly mis-spoke, as evidenced by their changing the lesson plan.

When you’ve mis-spoken, you don’t have a lot of moral high ground to “call out” people for not understanding you.

Monstro, you say “The Right is not letting up at all, so why should the White House be all sweetness and light?” So you’re saying that because they’re being idiotic assholes, the White House should repay them in kind? My point is that it is bad tactics to call people stupid and silly and all the rest. If the left does that, if it adopts the tactics of the right, we sacrifice any advantage we have over the right. You’re saying that the Right is wrong to use those tactics, and your conclusion is that we should use them too? Really?

And Monstro, your comment that *“I just want the stupid people to shut up already …” *is more bad tactics. It just pisses people off, and we don’t need that.

Squink, you say “How are the North Koreans suddenly the gold standard by which American behavior must be judged?” I fear you misunderstand my point. Asking six year olds to write about how they can “help their president” sounds like engendering a cult of personality. It isn’t, and you know that, and I know that … but it sounds like that. Which is what I said.

Look, people are running scared these days. They’re out of work, or their savings are gone, the economy’s in the dumper, their whole health system may be changed. Of course they are grasping at straws, and straining at gnats, and fearful of any unknown change. If people are running scared, it doesn’t help to call them idiots. Find out what they’re scared of, and work to allay their fears.

The bottom line is that the White House changed the lesson plan. That is an admission that they were wrong. So all of y’alls high and mighty nonsense is out of line. You get to be high and mighty when you are right, not when you’re wrong.