"Hello" and other socialisms
What the right-wing noise machine is likely to say next
"Hello" and other socialisms
Dick Polman, Inquirer National Political Columnist
To the surprise of absolutely nobody - except perhaps those Americans whose paranoia impedes their ability to inhabit the real world - President Obama's Tuesday speech to the nation's schoolchildren, released in advance yesterday, turns out to be nothing more than a nonpartisan paean to hard work and personal responsibility.
But that won't stop our most noisome fellow citizens from mining the Obama text for its dastardly implications. One might argue that the text is blander than vanilla ice cream, and that it couldn't possibly serve as fodder for the irrationally indignant. Oh ye of little faith. I simply assume that all kinds of new talking points will soon provide fresh grist for Fox, the talk shows, the viral emails, the blogosphere, and the cable TV bookers. Consider these italicized possibilities...
Obama text: "Hello, everyone - how's everybody doing today?"
Real Americans should be outraged by those provocative opening words. The presumptuous attempt by Barack Obama to directly address our precious children by saying "hello" is further evidence that he and his socialist bureaucrats seek to build a socialistic personality cult in the tradition of Joseph Stalin, Saddam Hussein, and Kim Jong II. This is why we need to take back our homeland, and defend it from tyrants abroad and here at home.
Obama text: "When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn't have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school."
This kind of foreign, exotic talk does not belong in an American classroom, and has no business being forced upon our children against their will. Indonesia is a faraway land where terrorists killed several hundred people in an attack in 2005, yet Obama in his school address flagrantly betrayed his oath of office by failing to admit to our children that he has yet to arrest and execute those who committed those heinous acts. He's probably waiting to read them their constitutional rights and offer them therapy. That kind of liberalism is what happens when you don't even attend the same school as "the American kids," as Obama himself just admitted.
Obama text: "You'll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free."
The president's attempt to use insidious negativism to indoctrinate our children is further proof of his ultra leftism. We intend to take back our country from his shameful message that America is crime-ridden, biased, impoverished, not fair, and not free. Bravo to those American parents who insisted on keeping their children home so that the budding minds of our nation would not risk being exposed to a false litany of all that is supposedly wrong with America.
Obama text: "We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems."
What problems? Come on, this is America. We need to take back our country from the crowd that always blames America first.
Obama text: "At the end of the day, the circumstances of your life - what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you've got going on at home - that's no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude."
It's a disgrace that a president for the first time is seeking to impose federal behavior requirements on our children. In our shining city on a hill, we have always been free to have bad attitudes - one of our Founding Fathers, as a youth, even chopped down a cherry tree - but that kind of freedom is no longer an option in Barack Obama's America. Instead, he now appears to hate the Founding Fathers. And there was absolutely no evidence in his school address that misbehaving children would not be sent to his death panels.
Obama text: "I hope you'll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don't feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter."
It's an outrageous insult to Americans as parents that Obama would dare to imply that our children are germ-infested robots who will only sanitize themselves if commanded to do it by the personality cultist-in-chief. The washing of hands, as a parental directive, is a sacred family value, and it is a mark of how far we have fallen as a nation that someone raised in Indonesia - as opposed to, say, Indiana - should presume to bring socialism into the family bathroom.
Obama text: "I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don't let us down - don't let your family or your country or yourselves down."
Who is he to "expect" anything from our children? Who is he to usurp our role as parents, and clearly imply that the IRS will raid our personal bank accounts if our children fail to meet his exotic standards? It is the height of foreign ideology and big government for a president to suggest that he is someone that our children should look up to. That is an alien concept that happens only with communism and fascism, or either. Americans need to exercise their Second Amendment gun rights at the town halls and tell their representatives that they're fed up with Obama's incendiary dictator talk.
Obama text: "Thank you. God bless you, and God bless America."
Surely the Founding Fathers did not intend for a president to bless this country without first producing a birth certificate.
Here again the Obama zombies are blind to what some of the problems with this speech were all about. The Department of Education put out a list of ideas for projects before, during, and after the speech. One assignment was" how one can help the President. " It was alter removed but the the 3 page list of suggestions remains on the Dept of Ed. website. I don't have a problem with the speech just the fact that some Obama zealot from the Dept of Ed. put out this list of projects associated with Obama's speech.- Mike, thanks for proving Polman's point so quickly and well...— Yersinia Pestis
- And if George W. Bush's DOE had sent out a similar list, you'd have been calling for a congressional inquiry, spewing about moral outrage at his abuse of power, wanting to know what his ulterior motives are and then demanding his immediate impeachment.— shewpa
- Yersinia- tone it down a notch. If the message of the speech is work hard, stay in school, and respect your teachers then that is fine. And I am sure that is what Obama will say. In fact I like the idea. But not included in Polman's column is the list of project suggestions for Obama's speech put out by the Dept. of Education. That propaganda smacks of indoctrination and it illustrates how this regime constantly over steps the boundaries.
- Overall, 48% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance. Fifty-one percent (51%) disapprove. This is the real problem for Obama. The Obama Admin. can continue to marginalize the opposition but when the opposition is greater than 50% of the electorate then they do so at their own political peril. This is why this character will be a one termer.
- MIke: your point shows that the balance of power works, and Obama respects it. Can't really say that much for the previous administration.....— Tony_From_PA
- Interesting. The last time I checked, the President is an office, not an individual. Washington, Lincoln, Bush, Obama and Rutherford Hayes all held that office. When people talk about Richard Nixon, the issue usually comes up that he "damaged the office of the Presidency." In that context, asking kids to help the President is no different from explaining how to write their Congressman or Senator, or perform any other valid service as a citizen, albeit a young one. In my lifetime I remember a President who challenged us to "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." It didn't feel like indoctrination, it felt like patriotism.
- docwill50- But the Dept of Edu. removed the project suggestion that student write about how they can help the President. I think what you have to remember here is that half of us didn't vote for him and despise his policies.
Dick, did you even read the 'study guides' that were initially prepped where students were asked how they could help Obama? Of course not. You're more interested in scoring a cheap shot against conservatives than in recognizing why folks are concerned this socialist might be like Hugo Chavez, seizing large chunks of the private economy and marginalizing media outlets he doesn't like. You would think at this point you might write up the White House's penchant for denigrating and insulting those that disagree with the President's policies.
Comment removed.- Up early today I see Mr. Polman and the vacation fired up the partisan side of you (is there any other:) as well! That's great! I thought healthcare would have been the 1st story 'out of the shoot', but I guess the Pres. is still trying to come up with a plan, so nothing to promote yet! I can just hear the outrage if GWB's Dept. of Education put out a 'suggested project' around a speech to school children of 'how to help the President Bush win the war on terror' or 'how to help President Bush privative social security'! That is the point and if it was not wrong the the Dept. of Education would not have pulled them from the festivities, IMHO:)— NEPhilly
- swedesboromike: what it actually said was that young students should be encouraged to "write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president. These would be collected and redistributed at an appropriate later date by the teacher to make students accountable to their goals." Shocking. It was intended to have students help the president lower the national drop-out rate. And no, they did not remove it. They reworded it to quiet the paranoid. It now reads "Write letters to themselves about how they can achieve their short‐term and long‐term education goals." Seriously, much like it was for some lefties under the last administration, is there ANYTHING Obama could do that you wouldn't somehow find fault?— still_independent
- I believe that the line in the optional additional material asked kids to think of ways they can help the President get computers and additional resources for their class room. Because computers, paper, pencils and books are tools of the devil socialists.— kathy in blue bell
- Comment removed.
"Let me know how you're doing. Write me a letter. I'm serious about this one. Write me a letter about ways you can help us achieve our goals." George H. W. Bush, 1991 speech to students. I wonder if any parents kept their kids home that day, or if schools decided not to show the speech. When the party leader is Glenn Beck, I guess we should expect this kind of reaction to the President of the US having the audacity to actually speak to school children.— one_eyed_jack
Cited by the Columbia Journalism Review as one of the nation's top political reporters, and lauded by the ABC News political website as "one of the finest political journalists of his generation," Dick Polman is a national political columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer. He is on the full-time faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, as "writer in residence." Dick has been a frequent guest on C-Span, MSNBC, CNN, NPR and the BBC. He covered the 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004 presidential campaigns.
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