Quote :

"People will forever remember this day and look back and say, 'Wow what a great guy he was"

Exactly what I thought about it... this speech will live on forever in my heart

9/8/2009 4:10:27 PM

so what if some kid is bullied at school or has abusive parents and the kid writes obama on what he can do to help, and says like "yo my parents hit me" or "if you got rid of this bully, [insert name here], it would help me" ? that'd be awesome if someone did that and got some help

9/8/2009 4:11:00 PM

^^that was someone who was criticizing obama's speech as a political move (ie that is a hypothetical kid who has been politically swayed by obama's speech)

9/8/2009 4:26:00 PM

hahaha leave it to hooksaw to talk shit about THAT speech


"well he didn't say any partisan stuff like my God Reagan, but I bet he woulda if the HEAT hadn't come down!!"


And I can't post about hooksaw without using the a bunch to balance out his overuse of it. :roll: :roll:

9/8/2009 4:36:43 PM

OMG OBAMA TOLD KIDS TO WORK HARD IN SCHOOL!!! WHAT A COMMUNIST!!!

9/8/2009 5:46:55 PM

Quote :

""There was no hidden agenda," said 15-year-old Nicole Moody of Draper."

exactly what one might say after failing to find the hidden agenda.


*







* The face is to indicate that the above comment was completely facetious before certain faggots get all butthurt by it.

9/8/2009 5:58:51 PM

i didn't think Republicans could get anymore retarded

they have proved me wrong

9/8/2009 6:08:36 PM

From the very beginning Obama's people were telling us that the speech was, well, exactly what it was. So now hooksaw is telling us that the President is a bald-faced liar who apparently expected to sneak a giant brainwashing organization past everybody.

9/8/2009 6:14:51 PM

Quote :

"well it's happened america....the president has programmed our nation's kids to be a bunch of environmentalist, vegan, hippie loving, socialized health care supporting, fair trade coffee drinking, hybrid driving, free market hating commies. the usa as we know it is doomed."

9/8/2009 6:27:08 PM

the original plan was to have a segment asking the kids to write a letter detailing how they could help the presidentr

9/8/2009 9:31:44 PM

a segment?

turn off the television, son.

9/8/2009 10:27:32 PM

I still can't believe that bastard had the balls to tell my kid to work hard in school. who the fuck does he think he is

9/8/2009 11:19:41 PM

Quote :

""well it's happened america....the president has programmed our nation's kids to be a bunch of environmentalist, vegan, hippie loving, socialized health care supporting, fair trade coffee drinking, hybrid driving, free market hating commies. the usa as we know it is doomed.""

a black man is doing this?

[Edited on September 8, 2009 at 11:39 PM. Reason : !]

9/8/2009 11:39:13 PM

^^ I actually heard a local NPR story (on the Boise, ID station) where an interviewed mother said almost exactly that. Her quote was something like "The President has no right to tell our kids what they should do in school. He crossed a line today - that is the parents' responsibility"

9/8/2009 11:53:46 PM

then maybe they should take their kids out of government funded schools.

9/8/2009 11:56:43 PM

^^I wish parents would take more responsibility in their kids' schooling, but that is for another day.


there is nothing wrong with the President speaking to kids. I am sure it was an awesome experience for the kids.

the right wing nutzoids sound like idiots. but dont kid yourself, had this been McCain speaking to an assembly about his military service, the left wing nutzoids would be sounding EXACTLY THE SAME.

this is a great example of how fucked up our politics are.

9/9/2009 8:18:12 AM

Honestly I wouldn't care.

Even if he was talking to my kids about policy, who cares? There's absolutely NO way that a one hour speech over a television while sitting in a classroom is going to somehow "convert" my kid to a different political ideology. Even if it did, that's his choice to make his own decisions about how he feels about these things.

These parents who are against stuff like this are the same ones who say things like, "THERE'S NO CHANCE IN HELL THAT MY BOY IS GOING TO TURN OUT LIBERAL/GAY/ATHEIST/Fill in your own here."

9/9/2009 8:36:32 AM

Quote :

"the right wing nutzoids sound like idiots. but dont kid yourself, had this been McCain speaking to an assembly about his military service, the left wing nutzoids would be sounding EXACTLY THE SAME. "

Why would anyone give a shit about that?

9/9/2009 8:47:25 AM

Quote :

"the right wing nutzoids sound like idiots. but dont kid yourself, had this been McCain speaking to an assembly about his military service, the left wing nutzoids would be sounding EXACTLY THE SAME. "

I bet people would have rioted and burned down stores and blown stuff up too

9/9/2009 9:13:31 AM

I was just pointing this out for the holier-than-thou, blinder wearing hacks on this board.

you shouldnt get your panties so bunched up because some right wing idiots are taking a shot at your guy over something so incredibly ridiculous like speaking to high school kids. in the end, they look a lot stupider (like the lefties of the same ilk bashing Bush I for the same thing) than the Obama Administration.

9/9/2009 9:53:13 AM

Quote :

"the left wing nutzoids would be sounding EXACTLY THE SAME."

he didn't say everybody on the left would be against it, just like everybody on the right wasn't making a big deal about this... in fact, pretty much everybody, regardless of political alignment, in TSB was in agreement that the outrage over this was stupid


but instead you guys had to out yourselves as left wing nutzoids and get all defensive

9/9/2009 10:26:42 AM

Considering that McCain himself was more highly regarded by the left than the right's regard for Obama, i'm pretty sure things would have been very different if McCain had won, and this was McCAin.

And right-wing nutzoids are far more nuts than left-wing nutzoids, if your media representatives are any indication.

9/9/2009 10:36:20 AM

Quote :

"And right-wing nutzoids are far more nuts than left-wing nutzoids, if your media representatives are any indication."

come on. are you really saying that "my crazies are better than your crazies?"

9/9/2009 10:56:12 AM

Quote :

"moron: You are seriously screwed in the head if, as a parent, you don't want your child exposed to the President of the United States."

that's a blanket statement... if the president is george bush, hell yeah i wouldn't want my kid exposed to that retarded monster. what if cheney were president? or ashcroft, wolfowitz, perle, or pipes? evangelical zionists/nutjobs/warmongers....

president doesn't mean "good person".


[Edited on September 9, 2009 at 11:02 AM. Reason : what if it was PALIN???]

9/9/2009 11:01:58 AM

^^ I'm not saying they're "better" they are just more manageable, and less dangerous since they don't have the biggest news media outlet fueling them.

^ If Bush is going to give a speech on doing well in school, and he says this is his intention, then yes, you are too extreme if you panic about this. Even if it was Palin, and she managed to get democratically elected, you still don't try and foster the idea that it's okay to blindly reject things you preemptively judge to be against your values. As a parent, your job is to teach them to think for themselves, and answer any questions as best as you can about what they think the president had to say.


[Edited on September 9, 2009 at 11:09 AM. Reason : ]

9/9/2009 11:03:26 AM

The ad hominem attacks from the far right are out of control. It really damages the credibility of conservatives generally when even some of the mainstream of the right (if you assign that label to the Fox News crowd and numerous elected officials) attacks Obama for something as innocuous as this. It isn't like liberals were pitching a fit when President Bush read to kindergarteners.

It is also intellectuallly lazy, dishonest and irresponsible for the MSM to headline this a "contraversial speech".

9/9/2009 11:06:50 AM

^^ agreed... point taken.

9/9/2009 11:15:05 AM

Quote :

"“It’s really kind of amazing to me that it was a speech that I would have expected Ronald Reagan to have given, not a man that is as politically far left as Barack Obama,” said Kelle Corvin, a mother of two students at Oakview Elementary"

haha

http://www.greenvilleonline.com/article/20090909/NEWS/909090343/1011/NEWS03/Some-Greenville-students-say-Obama-school-speech-was-inspiring

9/9/2009 12:32:30 PM

Since--as expected--those soaring heights of discourse never materialized, here's some perspective. . .

When Bush spoke to students, Democrats investigated, held hearings
09/08/09

Quote :

"The controversy over President Obama's speech to the nation's schoolchildren will likely be over shortly after Obama speaks today at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. But when President George H.W. Bush delivered a similar speech on October 1, 1991, from Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington DC, the controversy was just beginning. Democrats, then the majority party in Congress, not only denounced Bush's speech -- they also ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate its production and later summoned top Bush administration officials to Capitol Hill for an extensive hearing on the issue."

http://tinyurl.com/l5zqje

9/9/2009 2:51:58 PM

Would be interesting to see a transcript of that speech to see what all the post-facto uproar was about.

9/9/2009 2:58:12 PM

(Continued from above.)

Quote :

"Unlike the Obama speech, in 1991 most of the controversy came after, not before, the president's school appearance. The day after Bush spoke, the Washington Post published a front-page story suggesting the speech was carefully staged for the president's political benefit. 'The White House turned a Northwest Washington junior high classroom into a television studio and its students into props,' the Post reported. With the Post article in hand, Democrats pounced. 'The Department of Education should not be producing paid political advertising for the president, it should be helping us to produce smarter students,' said Richard Gephardt, then the House Majority Leader. 'And the president should be doing more about education than saying, "Lights, camera, action."' Democrats did not stop with words. Rep. William Ford, then chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate the cost and legality of Bush's appearance. On October 17, 1991, Ford summoned then-Education Secretary Lamar Alexander and other top Bush administration officials to testify at a hearing devoted to the speech. 'The hearing this morning is to really examine the expenditure of $26,750 of the Department of Education funds to produce and televise an appearance by President Bush at Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington, DC,' Ford began. 'As the chairman of the committee charged with the authorization and implementation of education programs, I am very much interested in the justification, rationale for giving the White House scarce education funds to produce a media event.' Unfortunately for Ford, the General Accounting Office concluded that the Bush administration had not acted improperly. 'The speech itself and the use of the department's funds to support it, including the cost of the production contract, appear to be legal,' the GAO wrote in a letter to Chairman Ford. 'The speech also does not appear to have violated the restrictions on the use of appropriations for publicity and propaganda.' That didn't stop Democratic allies from taking their own shots at Bush. The National Education Association denounced the speech, saying it 'cannot endorse a president who spends $26,000 of taxpayers' money on a staged media event at Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington, D.C. -- while cutting school lunch funds for our neediest youngsters.' Lost in all the denouncing and investigating was the fact that Bush's speech itself, like Obama's today, was entirely unremarkable. 'Block out the kids who think it's not cool to be smart,' the president told students. 'If someone goofs off today, are they cool? Are they still cool years from now, when they're stuck in a dead end job. Don't let peer pressure stand between you and your dreams.'"

9/9/2009 3:02:25 PM

I don't think Obama tried to use the word "cool" once.

9/9/2009 3:35:49 PM

There are sites with transcripts if you google enough. The speech itself is innocuous enough. Several things to note, however:

-The speech was made during the beginning of the 1992 election season, as democratic primaries were underway. Many candidates had been denouncing Bush's lack of attention to domestic issues.
-The first half of the speech was directed at adult viewers, not at children.
-There was no pre-speech conflagration from the liberal media; no outcry from parents who didn't want their kids exposed to the President.
-Bush's approval rates were in decline at this point in his presidency.

[Edited on September 9, 2009 at 3:49 PM. Reason : .]

9/9/2009 3:48:37 PM

i'm still in disbelief that anyone cared about this speech at all. i haven't seen a single thing yet from the speech that was even remotely off-base. all non-topical opinions aside, this whole "controversy" needs to DIAF already.

9/9/2009 10:54:33 PM

hooks:

Quote :

""

So, has this address corrupted our kids yet? Its fun to look back at issues like this out of the context of the immediate politics of the time to see how silly they were.

8/4/2010 10:53:07 PM

http://www.ktxs.com/news/25010868/detail.html

Quote :

"President's Back To School Speech Comes And Goes Without Controversy A Different Story From Last Year When Parents Were Outraged By The Broadcast Directly Into Classrooms September 14, 2010 ABILENE, Texas -- Some Abilene students watched President Barack Obama's 2nd annual "back to school" speech without much controversy. A different story from last year, when parents were outraged about the broadcast into classrooms. School officials told us they're not sure why this year came and went without the drama. ... Throughout his 20 minute talk, President Obama encouraged students to stay in school, and think about their future."

Where's the outrage?

9/15/2010 1:09:31 AM

Quote :

"Where's the outrage?"

willing to bet that there was a huge drop off in the number that actually viewed it this year - I know several teachers and didn't hear anything about any of them or their schools showing it.

9/15/2010 10:46:55 AM

I think a big part of it is media coverage. If they decide to make it a story people get outraged, like with the quran burning. They coverage one guy but not others so that's where the outrage goes.

9/16/2010 3:17:59 AM

Actually, there was outrage. I don't have the time to dig it up now but I remember distinctly hearing one particular school district that required parental permission for students to hear the speech and in another where parents had the option of opting out their kids. It's pretty nuts.

9/16/2010 8:56:15 AM