Philotic Web

Bob, even I am amazed that a president telling kids to stay in school and work hard is a leftist plot and that conservatives are telling their kids to not go to school. I never knew that Ronald Reagan was indoctrinating kids to be like the Hitler Youth when he told them to stay in school and work hard.

Bob, even I am amazed that a president telling kids to stay in school and work hard is a leftist plot and that conservatives are telling their kids to not go to school. I never knew that Ronald Reagan was indoctrinating kids to be like the Hitler Youth when he told them to stay in school and work hard.

[citation needed?]

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/04/ ... index.html

Seriously. Complaining about the President of the United States giving one quick start of the year pep talk encouraging youth to stay in school and work hard is like...

Metaphors fail me. Crap.

According to my (mostly) conservative-sympathetic roommate, "people" are more worried about some phrasing in the summary of what the speech will be about, mostly concerning (and this is a paraphrase) "encouraging students, teachers, parents, and peers to help everyone to be the best that they can be," which they think is a sneaky way of introducing a new program like No Child Left Behind that doesn't have a blatant label on it. Of course, she and I both think that's jumping the gun a bit. After all, don't suspect malice where ignorance could be substituted.

So that might shed SOME light on the situation.

The problem a lot of people had with it was that the lesson plan the White House released assigned students the task of drafting letters explaining what they can do to "help the President."

I'd hardly call that simply encouraging students to do their best.

ETA: You know, at this point, I'm not really surprised you guys are ignoring the original and instead focusing on the revised version (which hasn't really sparked much controversy), all the while applying the controversy stemming from the original version to the new one in a blatant effort to make conservatives sound like clowns. Good work, team.

well lately conservatives have been clowns.

and really, writing letters to the president, 'what I can do to help' That's s*** that I've done for years in social studies programs. Sometimes to the president, sometimes to the governor, or the local representative. We had Roy Blunt come and talk to our fifth grade class. He proposed us a scenario where we denizens of St. Louis and we could vote whether or not to raise our own taxes to build a stadium for the St. Louis Rams. Being part of the most conservative part of Missouri (and after hearing him describe tax hikes as onerous, evil and never having merit) all but two of us voted against taxes (the two being the two biggest, craziest about sports guys in the class). He then told us we were stupid and that our city would fail and we'd lose all this other stuff because of the lost revenue from not having built the rams stadium. That spending money was the only way to avoid losing money. We then got mad at him and asked why he didn't tell us that when he proposed the scenario in the first place, and he told us, 'well you didn't ask about that.' It was an incredibly enlightening lesson in civics (the lesson being politicians will happily be dishonest to your face and then tell you they thought the dishonesty was a pretty good joke because it made them look smart). And I think he came to our class because we wrote letters about what we kids could do to help. I doubt he ever read any of them, but its certainly not an unheard of part of elementary social studies curricula.

Also, I didn't know there was a "revised" version, as I could only find articles like the one that Starlooker posted.

Malice, ignorance? This is really a useful rule to follow. Not that I'm saying it's just you who might make mistakes like that, Syphon.

Look, I'd personally find the idea of the Queen or Prime Minister doing an tv address to schools creepy as f***, but then I get that feeling a lot with the American Presidency and it's not like Presidents haven’t done this before.

The full section originally was:

"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."

Now from that it feels like it's a riff off the content of the speech (which remember no-one has seen and has any reason to imagine isn't exactly what they say it is) that the combination of weird education language (not uncommon) and weird presidential language (not uncommon) took to an unfortunate place. However, this was buried in the supplementary materials, not the 'LESSON PLAN THAT MUST BE FOLLOWED BY ORDERS OF THE LEADER' and when called on it, they clarified it to something that makes sense independent of the speech (What I suspect happened is that whoever wrote it didn't think through it'd be available prior and would be the only information available). So yes, a clarifythisplease seems perfectly reasonable, but what actually happened was:

"As the father of four children, I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama's socialist ideology. The idea that school children across our nation will be forced to watch the President justify his plans for government-run health care, banks, and automobile companies, increasing taxes on those who create jobs, and racking up more debt than any other President, is not only infuriating, but goes against beliefs of the majority of Americans, while bypassing American parents through an invasive abuse of power."

So yeah, clown time. Except because it fits in nicely with the constant stream of nonsense that's meant to delegitimise Obama as president, it's really not that funny.

Do you think we could split this off of Bob and into a separate topic?

my thoughts exactly nomi. :-p

Mich, the article starlooker posted specifically mentions it was revised. From the posted article:

Some of the controversy surrounding Obama's speech stems from a proposed lesson plan created by the Education Department to accompany the address. An initial version of the plan recommended that students draft letters to themselves discussing "what they can do to help the president."

So, it's kind of hard to simply suspect ignorance when the links posted include that little fact. And I generally try to assume that somebody isn't going to discuss something without actually knowing anything about it, especially if they're going to take a particularly strong position on it.

Adam, if the conservatives have been such clowns, why resort to lying about them to prove your point? That really doesn't follow. (It's also nice to see you include the lie in the title after being called out on it.)

Conservatives were flustered because the proposed lesson plan sent out to all school district, which teachers are likely to follow, instructed the children to write a letter explaining how to help President Obama, while the White House itself hadn't released any kind of information regarding what the contents of the speech would be. Add that to the fact that it's the day before he speaks to both chambers about health care reform, it doesn't sound all that innocuous.

That's not to say that some of the responses haven't been overblown. While the White House should have informed people what the speech content was way earlier, the immediate flooding of the school's phone line demanding they not air the speech was pretty silly. They should have just sought information regarding the speech's content. However, I also understand where they're coming from. Obama gave (barely) two weeks notice that he was giving the speech. The materials he released sounded fishy and he hadn't released information concerning the speech's content. The day after this speech he's supposed to speak to Congress about health care. So while the reaction was certainly overblown, it wasn't entirely unjustified, given the awfully high number of coincidences surrounding the speech. (And I thought liberals loved coincidence-inspired theories; after all, 61 percent of Democrats either believed (35%) or weren't sure (26%) that the September 11th attacks occurred with Bush's foreknowledge.)
And let's not forget that when George H.W. Bush talked to students about the need to learn math and science, the left was outraged. Dick Gephardt, who was House Majority Leader and from your old stomping grounds, called his speech "paid political advertising," despite the fact that Bush didn't include political messages in his speech. Nice to see that you folks still haven't knocked down that double-standard you have regarding pretty much any issue.

ETA: Fixed a typo Yebra pointed out; I will respond when I've got some free time (Monday or Tuesday, most likely).

I've really lost what your point was.

It's unreasonable to be mean to these people because they had very valid reasons to be upset and speculate angrily and publicly about the evil things Obama was going to tell kids to do, except well maybe it wasn't so much valid as a vague string of coincidences, but you know, TRUTHERS, who are you liberals to judge huh huh??

Conservatives weren't flustered because the proposed lesson plan sent out to all school district, which teachers are likely to follow, instructed the children to write a letter explaining how to help President Obama, while the White House itself hadn't released any kind of information regarding what the contents of the speech would be.

Aside the fact that sentence doesn't actually make sense (were not weren't?), the White House hadn't released any information on the content of the speech? This letter to principals on the 26th August said "During this special address, the president will speak directly to the nation's children and youth about persisting and succeeding in school. The president will challenge students to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning." That doesn't seem unclear at all on what the contents of the speech would be and it was right there at the beginning.

The weird thing about drawing equivalents between crazy on the left and right is that yeah, no monopolies anywhere - but it's much harder to find truthers in positions of power whereas you can find Republican congressman questioning Obama's citizenship fairly easy (the conspiracy theorists on Clinton murdering Vince Foster got a congressional investigation for Pete's sake) whereas officials on the left can't even be seen in the same room as the crazy as we're seeing with Van Jones. Crazy is no where near as institutional or coyly encouraged from above on the left.

Also, who the hell is lying? I've seen this called "indoctrination", "brainwashing" and drawing comparisons to Mao and yes, the Hitler youth - from what were incredibly mild triggers. Gephardt may have spoken out (AFTER the speech was actually given mind) but he called it an abuse of funds, not indoctrination. The difference in the scale and tone of accusations is huge.

I expect (fearless leader) gets a big ego boost from this speech that has yet to be given.

The problem with American politics in the last few years, is that both sides recourse immedietly to hyperbole and fearmongering. Bush curtailing due process to create Guantanomo and the Patriot Act's abridgment of individual rights, when filtered through the lens of political discourse becomes "We are moments away from living in a police state!" Obama becomes a socialist who wants to take away our guns, and both sides shout shrilly across a widening divide. This is a trend mirrored, and perhaps exacerbated by TV punditry.


P.S. I'm pretty sure that the title should read, Die Hitlerjungend sind Obama... since youth is in this case plural, but i'm not 100% on that. But even that wouldn't be a gramatical sentance. I think the meaning would be conveyed by Nachdem Obama "Stay in School" gesagt hätte, wäre die Jugend Hitlerjugend gewesen. (After Obama will have said "stay in school", the youth will become hitler youth.)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/p ... speech.pdf

The part where he explains exploitation using Marx's concept of surplus value might be pushing it.

I don't know, the part where he pretty much was telling the kids to fail just seemed like so much leftist propaganda! I don't want my kids to fail at things, I want them to succeed! Is he trying to make this generation a whole bunch of loser failures?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/p ... speech.pdf

The part where he explains exploitation using Marx's concept of surplus value might be pushing it.

I thought the part where he referred to Engels theories on the origins of the family (based on studies of polyandrous native culture in Hawaii and the Philippines, which is suspicious considering where Obama comes from) as the reason we are subject to a heritage of patrilineal private property--which must be overthrown--to be a sort of shocker.

Also, who the hell is lying? I've seen this called "indoctrination", "brainwashing" and drawing comparisons to Mao and yes, the Hitler youth - from what were incredibly mild triggers. Gephardt may have spoken out (AFTER the speech was actually given mind) but he called it an abuse of funds, not indoctrination. The difference in the scale and tone of accusations is huge.

I agree with your response Yeb, and I'll add a comment from a very conservative friend who I respect quite a lot:

Whether Democrats said hysterical things about Pres. Bush is irrelevant to Republicans saying hysterical things about Pres. Obama now. Even if they were equivalent one action does not justify the other.

I for one am getting damn nervous with our present leader. He was a great campaign tactician but I fear he comes up short as a president!

Now that the ZOMG speech is behind us, what inane thing are the crazies (on both ends, mind you) going to rant and rave about next?

I'm fairly certain the OMG staying in school is socialism! hysteria was more or less a breathing spell so now that they've caught their breaths they can resume the full volume hissy fit of shrieking and caterwauling about OMG healthcare is socialism!

I just deleted the long reply I typed while watching Mr. President on PBS tonight.I don't think PWEB is the place for me to weigh in on American politics. But DAMN I just can't stop gagging every time I see Pelosi over the presidents shoulder.

While I understand if you don't feel like sharing because you're uninterested in starting arguments or being attacked, it would be nice to hear a different side for a change. It'd be even nicer if you did it without becoming condescending, which is something I've seen from both sides.

(Not to imply that you were being condescending.)

It's too hard to talk politics at least for me, there is always someone (sometimes more than one) so shure everyone else is wrong ,that it takes all the joy out of debating over.
PS.I'm shure we would get along fine of course

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adiLJxayfg8

This goes perfect considering the topic title

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adiLJxayfg8

This goes perfect considering the topic title

That is hands down the best misuse of Downfall I've ever seen. Absolutely brilliant.

"everyone who voted for Obama leave the room now" *three people remain*

"with all due respect education is important"
"IT UNDERMINES EVERYTHING WE DO!"

"WHEN THEY LEARN TO THINK ON THEIR OWN THEY WON'T CASUALLY ACCEPT EVERY MESSAGE OF FEAR AND HATE WE TELL THEM!"

'He'll look intelligent and presidential. He'll make being smart cool... an enlightened population of critical thinkers to question us."

and of course there's the phenomenal and perfect closing line, which I won't spoil. but so brilliant.

And on a related note, captain of the death panel cheerleading squad continued to perpetuate her bald-faced lies and insane inventions of propagandistic paranoia today, the bitch. Now, thanks to her lying, we can't expect doctors to have a brief chat with elderly medicare patients about power of attorney and DNRs for example, because captain death panel cheerleader thinks talking about a DNR or who has the power to make medical decisions if you were to fall into a coma is the same as government mandated killing squads. Stupidity sometimes knows no bounds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adiLJxayfg8

This goes perfect considering the topic title

Bah. Bachmann. How the hell did she get reelected? Stupid rich white people in the northern suburbs...

HA! Hilarious!