Some conservatives are getting all riled over Barack Obama’s speech to school kids, urging them to wash their hands, stay in school, etc. I agree with my PJTV colleague Joe Hicks that this is way over the top, even if the Democrats did the same thing (and worse) to Bush 41 when he spoke to students in the early nineties. So it goes in our “sophisticated” political culture.
Still, banal as it is, something depressed me while reading the speech on whitehouse.gov. And then I realized: there was the I-word again, dominating the penultimate graph:
Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So 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 yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.
“I’m working hard…. So 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.” I… I… I… What is it about this man that he can’t keep himself out of it? Or even use “we,” since, theoretically, everyone in the government would like students to “get serious.” Is this “Big Brother” or just a personality glitch (disorder)? Or are they the same thing?
It would be difficult for me to subject my children to any sort of talk by this President, simply because he is so very loathsome.
The true believer may zeaously spend his time in pursuit of
political goals.Those who oppose him learn to view his every move as a veiled attempt to subvert the infidels and louts as defined by alinskyites..thus, no action, however innocent, goes unquestioned. This lesson was learned the hardway….
The question then becomes, at what price do we defend the republic,victory not withstanding, far more than innocence will be lost in the battle.
You do know what the traits of a narcissist are? One of these might be the constant use of “I”, ya know . . .
I agree with Maggie #1. Ibama might have the “right” to broadcast a message to the youngsters but he’s just so creepy that I wouldn’t want him around my kids.
I think parents have a right to protect their children from being influenced by the wrong kind of people. Ibama is the wrong kind of people.
I really wouldn’t want my children getting sucked into his personality cult any more than I would want my kids hanging around a Jim Jones type.
Ibama has made it clear that he wants to start an Ibama Youth Corps. This is the first step.
Sorry Roger, there’s something wrong with your radar in this instance.
What would’ve been great would’ve been if he had said, “The TAXPAYERS of this country are working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you books…”
Glenn Beck: “This week, by the end of the week, you will see that something that everyone feels in their gut is wrong but nobody’s really exposed it. It’s going to be exposed this week. And, you will see by the end of this week that people will go to jail.”
Link
What put the O’bama’s into the White House in the first place was the use of ” I ” by him and “He” by her, telling the mass voters how he would take
big steps to change their lives for the better, it worked then and he is now using the same strategy on our youth. With the help of the media that is still
blinded to “there deep seeded goals” his follower’s will only learn the hard way; Germany in the 30′s & early 40′s took children into youth camps and trained them, we see in the middle east how children are used and educated to the laws of those leading their countries, familes were and are torn apart
by such methods. If the Obama’s really want to send a healthy message to the children they should have had their children and some respected children
in the teen world on stage for the kids to be inspired by. His ego has done little, he may be the President but to junior hi and high school age, he is an
adult , and what does he know?
Under ordinary circumstances I would agree with the statement that school children should be taught respect for the Office of the President, even if not the President himself. (That kinda ended when my kids were watching the President be grilled about phone sex and semen on a dress, but I digress…)
Yet after 8 years of no picture of the President on the classroom wall, I find it a little disingenuous at best to hear these words from my kid’s teachers, and from the school principal. After having watched them struggle to keep their political distastes to themselves, and failing to do so, I am not inclined to be sympathetic to their sudden SURPRISE that some of us might object to this.
What upsets me is not so much the idea of the President addressing the nation’s children, it is the blatant, militant politicization of it – FROM HIS SIDE. The inclusion of lesson plans asking why students should ‘listen to important people in authority” (good god, imagine if Bush had said that.) The “what is my President trying to say to me? Asking me to do?” reeks and drips the same posturing as “The Office of The President Elect” branding we saw. I find it revolting.
Then – combine that with his stated intent to impose mandatory volunteerism, requiring 50 hours of community service from grade-schoolers and 100 hours from high school students, his stated intent to form a ‘civilian security force,’ his preaching to kids to NOT go out and be successful but to spend $120 grand on a college education and then go out and work for nothing, presumably with all their expenses still covered by their parents or the government…
I have alot more to say about his ‘do as I say’ approach, but this is already long enough.
It’s enough that he had to rewrite it – that tells you everything you need to know about who was right here. (And I agree with you on the “I” thing.)
Hey Roger, I understand why you think critics went overboard. But what do you think about the precedent it sets for next year? Will Obama make this a routine? And will each one creep further from “I” into “Our Dear Leader”?
Roger, I’m with you on all the issues, especially regarding this well dressed well spoken Huey Long we elected. And I used the analogy a long time before George Will did. But Barry handed us our hats today and we asked for it. Sorry about that.
Why work hard when affirmative action will lift me up to where I I I I I I I I I I I I I belong?
Obama is just using the children for his political agenda. He probably think he is Mao starting the new cultural revolution.
Obama’s use of the word “I” so often indicates either extreme arrogance or significant narcissism.
Neithter are desirable characteristics.
Obama appears to have both.
Obama is the Toby Keith of politics:
“I wanna talk about me
Wanna talk about I
Wanna talk about number one
Oh my me my
What I think, what I like, what I know, what I want, what I see
I like talking about you you you you, usually, but occasionally
I wanna talk about meeeeee
I wanna talk about me!
The use of “I” is one reason why conservatives are so against B. Hussein speaking to the kids. It misleads the kids. Many of them will think that the President is really “working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn.” In other words, the President, and or the federal government, will magically do all these things. As if well-intentioned people havn’t been trying for decades, and the federal government already wasted billions of dollars. And failed. Kids are impressionable and will believe the bologne — that someone is going to Save Them.
Presuming you don’t object to the content (I don’t), you should think about how he could phrase it that would be OK.
If he used “we,” wouldn’t that be either more Big Brother-ish or too indirect? Maybe “you should”, or phrasing it more as being in their own best interest?
His two biographies aside, I like the direct style.
Knowing his Messianic status in some circles, it could come across as “here’s how you can please Me, your Messiah.” (“Be sure to tell me all about your day when you light a candle in your little shrine to me in the corner of your living room.”)
But I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt this time.
Let’s face it, obama is so full of himself that he believes his own BS. Plus he loves to watch reruns of himslef on television. Its all about his ego!
You are right about the grandiosity implicit in the “I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books equipment and computers you need to learn” comment. While I cannot personally vouch for the “hard” work he is doing I do know that it isn’t by and large the federal government that provides these things. It is almost exclusively local and state government and their taxpayers, stakeholders and communities who provide these things. It would seem that some generosity of spirit would at least acknowledge their efforts and role in providing for their own children.
I didn’t see a minute of the speech and it doesn’t really matter what I think. Allow me to pass along what my 16 year old thought of the 15 minute interruption to his physics class: Why would the President waste 15 minutes of my time to speak to me like I was a 2nd grader?
Nuff said.
“”"”"” 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 yourself down. Make us all proud. “”"”"”"
Let someone trying very hard to think like an original American (that would be me) translate that for you:
“Bust your sorry little asses for The State, you brats!”
“I expect this, I expect that . . .” is the kind of cant that should grate on anyone who loves freedom. It’s a variation on that infamous set of phrases by Michelle Obama during the campaign where she ranted about “Obama is going to make you work . . . . blah, blah, ad nauseam.”
Why are so many people not attuned to the insolence and arrogance of this pair of overrated fools?
It’s so sad that our President never mentions the GREATNESS of our country, the good ole’ USA. He never mentions the pride he feels about America…maybe he doesn’t have any pride about his America.
He sounds as if he wants people to have allegiance towards HIM instead of towards America. As somebody who has studied history for decades, I find this very alarming, very reminiscent of how dictators came into power — transfer allegiance from the nation to the individual. Hugely scary idea for America’s future…
Mr Simon,
Regarding Hussein’s speech to school kids. During the Communist Russian Revolution Trotsky had no luck in persuading the masses to do what they were told. Exasperated, Trotsky turned to Lenin for a remedy about the situation. In response Lenin uttered his famous dictum ordering Trotsky to “go to the children.”
Citizens should read up on the topic of the psychology of Crowd Hypnosis from which they will learn that there are two objectives of the speaker, one is that the crowd agrees with the message, and two, that the masses eventually identify with the speaker’s tone of voice. In order to be effective, crowds, like individuals, have too agree to submit to be hypnotized. It is the identification and internalization of the tone of voice of the speaker that the crowd is listening too that induces mass hypnosis. The point is that; this time, whatever Hussein said didn’t really matter, what was important was that the kiddies would be able to identify that the speaker was Hussein whenever they heard his voice.