Then and Now
Before the controversy over President Obama's speech to schoolkids fades too far into the distance, it might be worth noting one amusing but under-reported angle.
Eighteen years ago, the first President Bush also gave a speech to schoolchildren. Like Obama's, it was full of sound advice -- "Don't let peer pressure stand between you and your dreams," for instance. Unlike Obama's, it wasn't broadcast across the land. There was no study guide.
Nevertheless, congressional Democrats pounced. They demanded an investigation. "The Department of Education should not be producing paid political advertising for the president," fumed House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt.
House Education and Labor Committee chairman William Ford ordered the General Accounting Office to look into the matter. To his disappointment, the GAO concluded that Bush's speech "appeared to be legal."
But as columnist Byron York noted in a recent piece, that didn't stop the National Education Association from denouncing Bush for holding what it dismissed as "a staged media event" at a public high school.
We are shocked -- shocked! -- to discover that everyone seems to have changed his tune.
Reader Reactions
This article, which I mentioned in a comment section two days ago, is just more proof of the hypocrisy on BOTH sides of the aisle.What goes around comes around.
Of course, some people just don’t want to believe it.
Students have the right to know what is really going on and inspiring words form the President will do no harm rather than doing nothing at all. The Obama school speech stirred up a lot of controversy among conservatives, especially the type that love to scream at the top of their lungs over nothing. That’s more or less what is controversial about the Obama school speech – nothing. It’s largely supposed to be inspirational, and encourage children to stick with education and not to give up or drop out if the going gets tough. Shocking, we know – children getting educations – we might start having more people acting all smart and stuff. The speech had no socialist or fascist overtones, and people that were protesting the Obama school speech might want to find a money lender to go do something, or maybe a hobby.
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