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Dan
Calabrese
Read Dan's bio and previous columns here
September 3, 2009
Seriously,
Conservatives, Your Kids Will Survive Hearing Obama Give a Speech
I’d say it’s pretty well established that I find President Obama to be
an
unqualified,
ridiculous,
B.S.ing president who should never have been elected.
So
perhaps you’ll pardon my lack of outrage that he wants to speak to my
son and millions of other K-6 students while they’re at school on
September 8, and I hope you’re not too terribly offended that I’m
laughing at yours.
Obama is going to make a special address to kids. This has certain
elements of the conservative Internet community in a frenzy. I’ve
already received several Facebook requests that I keep my son home from
school on September 8 so he will not be subjected to Obama’s supposed
attempt at “indoctrination.”
As
if! September 8 is Tony’s birthday (not to mention the first day of
school). You think he’s going to miss out on all the attention that
brings?
But, but . . . what if Obama gets inside his mind and turns him
into a plodding collectivist? What if he ends up on the playground
arguing that the soccer rules should be changed to redistribute goals to
each team according to its needs?
Holy crap. Conservatives, I love you, but sometimes you people really
need to get a grip.
The president is addressing kids. Big deal. I can remember Gerald Ford
asking kids to tell their parents to turn off the lights when we left a
room because we all needed to conserve energy or something. We were all
supposed to write letters to the president telling him what we were
going to do about this. I wrote one. Got a reply, even! It wasn’t from
Ford himself, but from some dunderhead who worked for him. Said
dunderhead probably sent the same letter to millions of kids.
It
took me years to figure that out, though. I thought the guy sat down and
wrote this letter especially to me. I was pretty pumped. Somehow it
didn’t prevent me from deciding, years later, that Ford was a pretty
mediocre president – even though you’re not supposed to think that where
I live.
This is one of those issues where it’s useful to take ourselves back to
the very recent past and try to remember when the shoe was on the other
foot. The left was so unhinged with its Bush Derangement Syndrome, we
heard stories about union-affiliated teachers getting upset by classroom
displays showing pictures of all presidents of the United States
– because the display included the execrable ChimpyMcHitlerWBush.
Conservatives pointed out, quite reasonably, that whether the left liked
it or not, Bush was the president, and you weren’t very well
educating the kids of America by trying to pretend otherwise. (The most
unhinged, of course, would counter that he wasn’t really the
president, you know, Florida recount and all. Just substitute a little
birth certificate insanity and you can recreate the dialogue for today’s
purposes.)
A
subset of conservative activists is circulating the teachers’ guide for
this event, including talking points before and after the speech, and
instructions to the kids on what to write down while Obama is speaking.
It asks the kids to do stuff like “write letters to themselves about
what they can do to help the president.”
Indoctrination! Then again, conservatives might prefer this question:
“Does the speech make you want to do anything?” (My son does awesome
vomit sound effects, proving that no one teaches him better than dear
old dad.)
I
hate to burst your bubble of outrage, but this is all pretty standard
stuff – Civics 101, if you will. I have no doubt that Obama would love
to turn the little crumb crunchers into future Democratic voters, if not
budding ACORN community organizers. But it’s nothing any president
hasn’t done in the past, or won’t do in the future.
We
always tell Tony not to take anything he’s told at face value, by
anyone, including his teachers, and certainly including President Obama.
I want him to hear the speech. It’s part of his education. The critical
thinking skills that will help him separate good information from bad
are the responsibility of his mother and me to impart to him.
If
you seriously feel the need to keep your kids home from school because
they might hear a speech by the president of the United States – and
that upsets you because this particular president is not your political
cup of tea – perhaps you’ve guzzled a bit too much of the partisan brew.
© 2009 North Star
Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.
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