After turning on my computer today, I went back to doing what I was doing when I turned it off last night –reading the Republican Party of Texas party platform– and then I opened up my news reader and found myself confronted, yet again, with Republican politicians saying bat crap crazy stuff. There will, no doubt about it, be posts on these things at a later time. Right now, I have this to say:
A long time ago in an America far, far away, parents used to take their kids out of school to watch the President of the United States give a speech. Well, parents that gave a damn did, anyway. I, and many of my childhood friends, got to stay home from school to see and hear presidential speeches and other important political or historical events … even when my (our) parents didn’t necessarily agree with what was being said or what was happening.
Now parents are going to keep their kids home from school so they won’t hear the President of the United States telling them to stay in school and get an education and to give back to the society they live in, because OMG!!! SOCIALIST-COMMUNIST-TERRORIST-FASCISM-HITLER-LENNON-MAO!!! The President of the United States wants to talk to our children!!! RUN AWAY!!!”
Amazing how much things have changed in the last 45 years, isn’t it?
The crazies managed to get their ‘concerns’ heard by the Albuquerque schools superintendent, as well as place a press release disguised as front page news in today’s paper. Your kid can stand outside during the speech if you don’t want him to watch the President.
I can just see it when the second grader comes home from school:
Little Billy: “Mommy, we watched TV at school today. There was a nice man who said we should read and do our homework. He was a colored man. Mrs. Jones said he was the President. Is that true?”
Mother: “Uhhhh…”
If they let their children see it then they’ll be making rude jokes at Obama’s expense for months and most of them won’t even remember anything about policies.
I saw all kinds of presidential speeches and historical stuff as a kid, and I remember the historical stuff clearly. Presidents talking? I might have remembered it for that day, because people were talking about it, and then went on with being a kid. It certainly didn’t “indoctrinate” me, and all of those were actual political speeches and not someone telling me to study hard and stay in school … which I wouldn’t have paid much attention to at all. Especially at school right before lunch.
Much ado about nothing.
When my MP came to talk to us at school he urged everybody not to hate teachers because they thought homework was more important than a band the entire school hated. I don’t think he ever twigged that we were laughing at him.
We had some high level law enforcement type person come talk to us once about his job and the evils of doing drugs. For almost all of us, if was the first time we’d ever seen or heard anything about drugs (small town in the middle of nowhere). Years later, we all used to laugh about it, because he taught us what stuff was supposed to look like and how it would make us feel. Thanks, dude!
And yeah, we snickered and laughed at him all the way through his long, boring speech. If the topic hadn’t been drugs, I doubt we would have paid any attention at all.