The ConWeb's Obama Speech Freak-Out

You wouldn't think a speech by President Obama would be such a big deal. But he was making one to schoolchildren, and that sent the ConWeb into a paranoid frenzy.

The Sept. 8 speech by Obama sent the ConWeb into a serious freak-out of baseless speculation that Obama would somehow be indoctrinating students in socialism (or something), and every ConWeb outlet found a way to contribute:

Parents across the country are rebelling against plans by President Barack Obama to speak directly to their children through the classrooms of the nation's public schools without their presence, participation and approval.

The plans announced by Obama also have been cited as raising the specter of the Civilian National Security Force, to which he's referred several times since his election campaign began, but never fully explained.

"He's recruiting his civilian army. His 'Hitler' youth brigade," wrote one participant in a forum at Free Republic.

-- Bob Unruh, Sept. 1 WorldNetDaily article. In fact, Obama has explained his "Civilian National Security Force"; Unruh and WND have failed to report it to their readers.

As many parents are focused on back to school clothes and supplies, the royal Czar Czar prepares to circumvent parental authority and speak directly to our children in one week. What will he command?

[...]

This much is certain, the entire cadre of Ombud children will be having a parent sanctioned skip day September 8th, but that's not enough. The public and the media need to demand that a transcript of this speech be made available before the weekend. Yes you can.

-- "Mithridate Ombud," Sept. 2 NewsBusters post (emphasis in original)

Great news. Our leader will be addressing all schoolchildren on September 8th. And the Department of Education has helpfully prepared a menu of activities for the day. As you'll note above, 7-12th graders are to view quotations from Pres. Obama, discuss them, and strive to understand what "the president believes is important" for students to be successful in school.

Wonderful. But why stop with students? Shouldn't Americans of all ages have the benefit of the President's wisdom? And why limit it to one day, and only to the topic of education?

[...]

Will our MSM report on the interesting parallel between our president's plan for our children and the approach of another Great Leader from the past?

-- Mark Finkelstein, Sept. 2 NewsBusters post

The Obama forces are getting desperate. They are using Saul Alinsky’s tactics for radicals against sincere Americans concerned with the direction in which Obama is taking the country.

This is right out of Alinsky Rules Eight and Twelve: “Attack, attack, attack from all sides, never giving the reeling organization a chance to rest, regroup, recover and re-strategize ... Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.”

[...]

The President is also hoping to influence voters through their children. This is a version of Alinsky’s Rule Eight – “As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new.” The children are Obama’s new flank, as he delivers a broadcast live via the White House’s Web site to the nation’s school children just a day before his address to Congress.

Schools are being strongly encouraged to have their students watch the speech and have been given training materials to use with the kids as a follow-up. Students will be asked to ponder such questions as: “What specific job is he asking me to do? Is he asking anything of anyone else? Teachers? Principals? Parents? The American people?”

With their parents watching the President’s prime time speech on health care the following night, will it be a mere coincidence if their kids start bugging them about what they plan to do to help the President?

It looks like Obama is adding another rule to the Alinsky set: ”Exploit the children to sell your arguments.”

-- Joseph Klein, Sept. 3 NewsReal post. Meanwhile, at the same time Klein was writing that post, the operator of NewsReal, David Horowitz, was using Alinskyite tactics to accuse Obama of ... using Alinskyite tactics. And he's soliciting money to publish "a new booklet" he's writing that he "must blanket on college campuses" -- that is, in Klein's words, exploit the children -- to do so.

Try as they might to portray the speech as a well-intentioned appeal to students to stay in school, study hard, and learn well, administration officials cannot avoid this central fact about the event - providing mass life-counseling to school kids is not what presidents are elected to do. So either the president does not understand what it means to be the nation's chief executive, or the speech should be viewed as a trial run for something else.

[...]

Equally worrisome here is the "Dear Leader" aspect of the president's speech to public schools students. A speech by the nation's leader exhorting students "to get focused and inspired for the new school year" would not be surprising in Havana, Caracas or Pyongyang. In Washington, D.C., however, it properly sets off all kinds of alarm bells. That is why thousands of parents are telling Talk Radio hosts and Internet web sites that they will be keeping their kids home next Tuesday.

-- Washington Examiner, Sept. 4 editorial

Going unmentioned by all of these writers was the fact that President George H.W. Bush to issue a similar address in 1991, and that President George W. Bush to post a "teacher's guide" on the White House website aimed at helping students understand the "freedom timeline" and encouraged them to "explor[e] the biographies of the President, Mrs. Bush, Vice President, and Mrs. Cheney." Further, President Reagan spoke to a group of students in 1988. None of these writers were particularly alarmed by any possible indoctrination going on there.

Earning extra credit for paranoia was a Sept. 4 Newsmax column by Dan Mangru, a columnist for Newsmax's financial website. After initially claiming that he saw "nothing harmful " in what Obama was planning to say to students, Mangru quickly descends into that Obama might grade students on how they react to his speech, which quickly devolves into him asserting it to be fact:

What if these letters were required to be scanned into a central government database? What if the students were graded based on whether they helped Obama or not? Imagine if your child received a B instead of an A because he or she didn’t help out Obama enough.

In a couple of years, reelection will come up. Will students get better grades if they march the streets with Obama campaign signs? Or maybe that will just be an extra credit assignment.

The next question you might ask is, what did Obama have plan for our children in grades 7-12?

[...]

To think that in America, the land of the free, that we would force our children to be accountable to Obama, or force them to be inspired by Obama, and then have their grades decided by that.

Even worse, all of this indoctrination is being done with taxpayer money.

That’s right America. The tax dollars that we all pay are going for the production of this video, the streaming of this video to every classroom in America, all of the support materials on how the children should be accountable to Obama and be inspired by Obama, every single little thing… all funded with our taxpayer money.

Do you want to pay taxes to have your children forced to be accountable to Obama?

By the end, Mangru is in full rant mode:

But to go after the children, there is something wrong with that on a very fundamental level. To go after young and impressionable minds and tell them that they have to be inspired by our President and accountable to the President, that just crosses the line.

Children should be inspired by their parents and should be accountable to their parents, not to Big Government and its almighty leader President Barack Obama.

Perhaps Mangru needs to stick to financial analysis.

WorldNetDaily endeavored to get a couple final freak-outs in on the day of Obama's speech. Joseph Farah wrote:

It's not safe to send your child to public school today.

Chances are good the indoctrination level will go from Defcon 2 to Defcon 1.

Barack Obama has already stolen your money. Today he attempts to steal the minds of your children.

In fact, as of today, it may be too late.

[...]

Why is he speaking to schoolchildren? Because he knows most adults no longer believe anything he says. Because he knows children are not discerning enough to see through his lies. Because he is attempting to find new constituents for the 2012 election, at which time fully a fourth of these helpless subjects will be of voting age.

Why is it important that you listen to him? It is not. It is important that children not listen to him.

And that's why I am urging all responsible parents to keep their children out of school today or insist your district provide alternative education plans for the time of this speech.

Children don't need to be politicized.

I know Obama's friend Bill Ayers would disagree.

Determined not to be outdone by even Farah, Janet Porter wrote:

America demanded a rewrite of Obama's speech he is to give to our children today. The indoctrination of the captive audience in public schools was going to be subjected to helping President Obama secure his radical agenda of government take over of health care – but instead of recruiting "Obama Youth," with written pledges, that agenda has been thwarted for another more opportune time – like when people aren't watching as closely.

Of course, there's absolutely no evidence that a previous version of Obama's speech ever existed, let alone that it was about "government take over of health care." Thus, Porter cannot credibly claim there was a "rewrite." (But then, Porter has numerous credibility problems.)

Related articles on ConWebWatch: Obama Hate Central Behind the Whitewash

After Obama gave his speech -- which, as expected by everyone but the ConWeb and was stated beforehand by the White House, contained nothing controversial and challenged students to set goals, work hard and stay in school -- the ConWeb crazy train still found a way to roll on:

Brent Bozell's Sept. 8 column, appearing after the speech, condemned speech because, well, it was Obama giving it:

Why is this controversial? What is more American than having her president addressing the young? Reagan did it. So did Bush. The problem is Obama and his administration. There is – always is – a political agenda.

The mission was not to educate, it was to indoctrinate.

Bozell offers no evidence that Reagan's and Bush's speeches, unlike Obama's, had no political agenda. To the contrary, Reagan talked up tax cuts in his speech.

Bozell went on to conflate criticism of the overreaction of right-wingers like him to Obama's speech to attacks on all criticism of Obama, then denounced the very idea of public education: "It’s not insane to wonder why our schools should be directed by the government to discuss how the Dear Leader is inspiring the young, and how the Dear Leader can be helped."

A Sept. 11 WorldNetDaily column by Dan L. White similarly attacks the idea of public education, claiming that it allows the government to "control the minds of its citizens and thereby centralize power. And that's how Obama was able to give his speech to millions of captive young minds, subservient to the socialist institution, ready to be led by the master – because of the centralized school system." As if homeschooling -- the "decentralized, individualized and maximized" ideal White presents -- isn't about a similar attempt to control the minds of children, except by parents.

Meanwhile, the ConWeb sought to find partisan intent in Obama's speech where there wasn't any. A Sept. 8 WND article was headlined, "Prez injects politics into school speech," but the article pointed out that Obama "stayed carefully in the encouraging mode during the broadcast portion of the speech" but brought up health care reform in "a conversation with students." WND's headline writer is apparently unclear on the difference between a speech and a conversation.

A Sept. 9 CNSNews.com article by Penny Starr similarly tried to find something wrong with Obama talking to students, expressing alarm that Obama "made a pitch for health care reform in a discussion with 40 freshmen." It wasn't until the 14th paragraph that Starr got around to mentioning that "Obama omitted any discussion of health care" during the broadcast speech.

So what have we learned from this little episode? That the ConWeb has no intention whatsoever to be fair to Obama, and that it will misrepresent his words and actions in order to destroy his administration and him personally.

ConWebWatch detailed at the outset of the Obama administration how WorldNetDaily was setting itself up to be "Obama Hate Central" -- which has proven itself to be all too true. The only surprise this time is that the rest of the ConWeb eagerly played along.