Obama Speech Controversy Is About Socialism? (Guess Again)

2 years ago

0 Comments Say Something »

Text Size

Mary C. Curtis

National Correspondent

Author Bio »

Contact Author »

Subscribe :

I'm glad you said it, Bonnie. You asked: Could uneasiness with a black president of the United States as authority figure have anything to do with objections to President Obama's speech to schoolchildren? (Lynn Sweet examines the speech and the controversy.)

The stay-in-school, study-hard message couldn't be the reason. I looked over the transcript and I found this:

"Every single one of you has something you're good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That's the opportunity an education can provide."

Nope, no partisan propagandizing. It's similar in tone to a President George H. W. Bush's speech to schoolchildren in 1991:

"When it comes to your own education, what I'm saying is take control. Don't say school is boring and blame it on your teachers. Make your teachers work hard. Tell them you want a first-class education. Tell them that you're here to learn."

Both are a far cry from President Ronald Reagan's 1986 words to schoolchildren:

"We got inflation down, interest rates down, and our economy created over one and a half million new jobs just last year alone. The poor are now increasingly able to dig themselves out of poverty, and that's been good economic news."

You remember that. No? I suppose it was because, despite Reagan's detour into policy, citizens decided to give the president respect and the benefit of the doubt and leave their torches and pitchforks in the corner.

I would be a little less suspicious of critics' motives if so many of their objections weren't accompanied by name-calling, just as I could buy the sincerity of opposition to health-care reform if so much of it didn't come with posters of Obama as Hitler.

OK, critics, so you don't like everything this president does. Neither do I. But you don't like anything about him, his family, his accomplishments or his dog?

Criticism of policy is so often accompanied by personal sniping, about Michelle Obama's staff (similar in size and salary to Laura Bush's staff when she was First Lady), the First Family vacation (paid for by the First Family), and Obama's travels around the world to meet world leaders (that's what presidents do).

And, of course, there are constant wisecracks about how President Obama, his wife and two daughters look and dress and act. Important issues are given the same attention as trivial distractions and petty insults.

The president won by a greater margin than his predecessor. Since then, his very citizenship has been called into question, and the Southern Poverty Law Center has documented a rise in the number of hate groups. You get the feeling that a lot of people just don't want to believe that Barack Obama is president of the United States and will hold their ears and their breath until he is no longer in the White House.

I'm not one to see race everywhere, even when I see it regularly in my e-mail. But when even a straightforward speech about personal responsibility and the importance of education is twisted into some sort of subversive plot, I, like Bonnie, can only think that something else is in play.

Filed Under: Education, Race Issues, Obama Administration, Woman Up

Our New Approach to Comments

In an effort to encourage the same level of civil dialogue among Politics Daily’s readers that we expect of our writers – a “civilogue,” to use the term coined by PD’s Jeffrey Weiss – we are requiring commenters to use their AOL or AIM screen names to submit a comment, and we are reading all comments before publishing them. Personal attacks (on writers, other readers, Nancy Pelosi, George W. Bush, or anyone at all) and comments that are not productive additions to the conversation will not be published, period, to make room for a discussion among those with ideas to kick around. Please read our Help and Feedback section for more info.