Save My Babiez from teh President!

Here’s the situation: The President is going to give an address to the nation’s schoolchildren. Initial reports say he will emphasize the importance of taking their education seriously, staying in school, etc. He’s a controversial President. There is an outcry from the other side of the political continuum. There are fears he will push his political platform through the nation’s children. It sounds like Nazism, or Communism, or some kind of scary -ism.

This happened in 1991. The President was George H.W. Bush. His Department of Education encouraged teachers to broadcast the speech and use it as a teaching opportunity. Bush encouraged students to write him letters, with suggestions on how he could better achieve his goals. The Democrats were upset. The party leader called Bush’s address a “paid political advertisement.” Bush’s supporters said that was ridiculous.

So now we come to the current hullaballoo, suspiciously similar to the above, except the players have all flipped sides. Now the Conservatives are accusing the President of indoctrinating the kids. Some school districts won’t broadcast the speech. Many parents will keep their kids home, rather than risk them hearing it.

Somehow (I am seriously not sure how), this has become confused with the paranoia about “pledging allegiance to Obama.” Here’s my synopsis of both issues, after some internetz researchz:

1. In March, David Plouffe, the architect of Obama’s 2008 campaign (who no longer works for the administration) sent a letter to Obama supporters about the “American Pledge Project,” asking them to “pledge” support for the President’s “vision” for energy, health care, and education.
2. Oprah’s production company later made a video (apparently in response to #1) with celebrities pledging to do things like be nice to strangers, conserve water, etc., ending with a big ObamaFace on the screen. Aston Kutcher and Demi Moore actually pledge to be the President’s “servants” (someone should take them up on that; they’d look good as butler & maid).
3. Now comes the President’s speech to children, scheduled for Sept. 8, apparently to encourage them to “set goals, work hard and stay in school.”
4. The Department of Education has posted ideas for activities and assignments, like asking children think about what the President wants them to do (also, originally, how the kiddos can “help the president,” but that language has been softened after the blowback from the Right).
5. Some Conservatives are now claiming that (a) Obama is behind the Oprah video, (b) that Americans are being told to pledge allegiance to Obama himself, and (c) his upcoming speech to the schoolkids of America will be the next installment in this style of indoctrination.

There is no apparent connection between the speech and Oprah’s video. There is no evidence the President plans to foist his politics on the kids (except the politics of wanting kids to get edjimacated). But if Real Americans were good at fact-checking, our auto companies would be profitable, nobody would eat fast food, and we would currently be occupying 50% fewer countries in the Middle East.

A lot of people seem to be in Terror Mode after listening to Rush and Glenn (Presidential Propaganda Alert is ORANGE), but there is nothing unprecedented about the President’s speech to kids, and no evidence of any sinister motives. The only way this will change is if he inserts some pushy “tell your parents to support my economic, environmental, or healthcare plans” language in there. That doesn’t seem likely, but we’ll have to wait and see. That’s the risk we take any time we allow children to hear a politician speak.

On another level, I think the outcry is partly due to shifting power dynamics. In this CNN article, the GOP Chairman is quoted as saying, “…I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama’s socialist ideology.” Good point (except the misuse of socialist). Because we’ve had mostly Republican Presidents for three decades, we Americans are not accustomed to taxpayer dollars funding anything except nationalist, pro-military, pro-corporate, and generally pro-conservative ideologies.

If this school speech is a Presidential propaganda conspiracy, it’s certainly not the hardcore, secrecy-and-lies, subvert-the-gullible-citizens kind. Would you like one of those? Here you, go.