A friend of mine related to me the story of how she was the unlucky one to have to answer phone calls from angry parents to her school district office in which she works concerning President Obama's speech to their children. She related that there was a lot of yelling and angry name calling. But the name calling was not solely directed at President Obama, it was just as much directed at her. They didn't know her or her opinions; she was just merely reciting the school district policy that they decided to show the speech but were allowing parents to have their children opt out of it. Still some chose to insult her by calling her such things as a communist, Nazi, and even a slut.
What a shame that these people are modeling hatred for their children to see, insuring that their next generation will act in the same way. What a shame that these parents, knowingly or not, are teaching their children to distrust not only the President of the United States but the office of the President itself.
What a shame for kids whose parents or schools opted them out of hearing the President's speech. What a shame for those kids who perhaps only have one parent and missed out on hearing, possibly for the first time, that even the President had just one parent when he was growing up. What a shame for those who feel their parents push them too hard to excel in school and missed hearing the President of the United States say that his mother made him get up at 4:30am so that she could teach him some extra lessons that he was missing because they couldn't afford to send him to the school where many of the American kids were going when they lived in Indonesia.
But these are the government haters of today. These are the tea-baggers, the town-hall meeting screamers, and now they have proclaimed their fear that the President of the United States is going to indoctrinate their children by instilling in them the same beliefs that he has.
Well, as it turns out, like most Americans already knew, Obama believes that kids should work hard and stay in school and that largely was all that the speech was about. Nothing political or even remotely ideological about it.
What a shame that their kids will never hear the President of the United States say those words himself. It was a wonderful speech, the kind that we all want our children to hear. The kind of encouragement offered in his speech could have made a difference in some of their lives. A speech like that can carry so much more weight when a child hears it from someone like the President.
Opponents of this speech are people who oppose every single thing this President does. They have become the loud and vocal minority of this country. While many of us shake our heads in disbelief at what is coming out of their mouths the mainstream media is focusing their cameras on them and sticking their microphones in front of their faces. Why? Because they are yelling and screaming and that, unfortunately, is too often what is used as a criteria for determining what is newsworthy.
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