Send your kids to school on Tuesday — but pack the caffeine
Bookworm on Sep 07 2009 at 10:53 am | Filed under: Barack Obama, Education
Had we in the conservative world not made an uproar, I have no doubt but that the Obama speech, and the supporting teaching materials, would have encouraged children to come to the cult of Obama. Thanks to the uproar, the speech shows that the cult of Obama is pretty much comprised of one member — Obama himself.
You can read the speech here. My eyes rolled back into my head about 12 paragraphs in, after Obama’s umteenth reference to himself. “I” this and “I” that. An enterprising Hot Air reader counted 55 self-references to Obama and only four to America. It a paralyzing speech made up of equal parts vanity and lecture.
When I was living in England, there was a running joke about Yorkshire codgers greeting every complaint about the hardships of modern life with a self-serving story beginning “When I were a lad….” Thus: “You call this snow? When I were a lad, it snowed like this every day, all summer long, and we had to walk through this wearing nothing but our swimsuits and snowshoes.”
Obama has created his own “When I were a lad” speech. Unless his personal charm comes through in the videos (and some high schoolers with lingering affection for him may see it), most students will be twitching with the desperate desire either to run or to sleep.
We must be eternally vigilant, but I think we’re safe this time.
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11 Responses to “Send your kids to school on Tuesday — but pack the caffeine”
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FIRST YORKSHIREMAN:
You were lucky. We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six in the morning, clean the paper bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down t’ mill, fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home our Dad would thrash us to sleep wi’ his belt.
SECOND YORKSHIREMAN:
Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at six o’clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of ‘ot gravel, work twenty hour day at mill for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!
THIRD YORKSHIREMAN:
Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to ‘ave to get up out of shoebox at twelve o’clock at night and lick road clean wit’ tongue. We had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit’ bread knife.
FOURTH YORKSHIREMAN:
Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o’clock at night half an hour before I went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us and dance about on our graves singing Hallelujah.
Greetings:
Then, on the other hand, as a former sweetheart of mine used to like to sing:
“I get up at twelve and go to work at one,
Take an hour for lunch and then at two I’m done.”
Your former sweetheart must have been a union worker…or maybe a government worker. Or the very worst – a government employee who belongs to a federal union!!
suek … very funny!
vanderleun
Very entertaining. Kinda makes one pine for the good ol’ days. LOL
vanderleun, hilarious! Your Yorkshiremen oneupmanships were like William Burroughs at his best. Just when you thought he couldn’t top some over-the-top description, he did. Very nice work.
I like over the top.
As much as I would like to take the bow, it’s not me but Monty Python.
The same Monty Python as in pining for the Fjords
from text of speech: ‘I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too.’
Wait a minute – I didn’t know that He was working hard to fix up stuff and get students stuff that they need to learn. Silly me. I thought that was what my local taxes were buying for local students. Could He have told a falsehood here?
He is tone deaf to His officious and parent-in-chief tone.
‘I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too.’
Translation:
I’ll be hiring a new czar to head up a design team (school version of Home Makeover-a shovel ready project). I am working with the U.S. Dept. of Ed. to update your history books, to instruct you on how to correct America’s mistakes.
You know…if you hate your school – how it’s run – you can campaign to recall and replace your local school board members. You can even run yourself – which I encourage! If you have a small school district, this will work. If you live in a large school district – like the LA unified school district – it becomes very much more difficult. Now imagine what it’s going to be like if control of local school districts gets shifted to Wash DC…you voice will be so minute as to be impossible to make _any_ difference whatsoever.
States are already in the business of setting standards, goals and funding…how much influence do you as a parent have on the State choice of textbooks? curriculum etc?
That’s what I mean. If control goes to Washington, it won’t come back unless the whole system fails. If it goes to Washington, people like Ayers will be instrumental in indoctrinating children into socialism. Home schooling is likely to become a crime – as it is presently in Germany. (maybe other countries as well, but I know it’s true of Germany)
Your job as a parent will be one for which you answer to the government – those children are not _yours_ – they belong to Society, and if you don’t do the job right, Society will take them away.