Obama's Back To School Speech

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I didn't go to school today, so I never got a chance hear it. Anyone else did?

I watched it off a link from Yahoo. He made reasonable points that reasonable people already know. The text was also available online which I preferred because I didn't have to hear it.

It's on whitehouse.gov, both the transcript and the video.

It seemed pretty generic to me, the same sort of crap that's routinely fed to kids by any number of people at the start of a new school year. I fail to comprehend why conservatives are so up in arms about it.

Probably because what was released beforehand as a proposed "lesson plan" raised questions and prior proposed speech drafts were less "generic" than what Obama went with in the final draft.

I haveta agree with that. You really didnt miss anything. It sounds like the same old "work harder and stop being a whiny b*tch" lectures that my dad gives me and he's Libertarian.

I think the controversy was that he was originally planning to tell kids to "help the president". You have to admit that would have had some oddly totalitarian overtones...

I was amused by the "controversy" that some attempted to drum up. There were actually parents in this area, at least, acreaming about "indoctrination"!

Let me get this straight - your kids are in school for eight hours a day, but don't seem to be learning anything. You yourselves are a major influence in their lives, but complain that they never listen. And you think a politician is going to "indoctrinate" your kids with a lousy half-hour speech?? For that matter, you think your kids are actually going to listen to a half-hour speech???

George HW Bush gave a speech to schoolchildren in which he told kids to "help the President" and Reagan's actually was trying to instill certain political views in his speeches to kids, so the Republican uproar over Obama's speech is hypocritical at best. I know you're not a Republican, but most of the people who made a big deal over the speech are.

Agreeing with Orwell. I was barely paying attention. Having read the transcript beforehand did not help matters.

Although I would have preferred the nationalistic message of letting down your country to be omitted, I was pleased with the speech. And I'm not an Obama fanboi.