The flack against President Obama from certain folks is just ridiculously excessive. Criticism of his policy is fine. But that some consider anything he does regardless of message and intent to be malicious is just the worst type of antagonism. It’s not really about policy anymore but rather about a fixture of hate directed towards an individual. A reverse “Obama Messiah” complex, “Obama devil” complex. Some just seem to forget that the President has a job to do that’s beyond partisanship. If President McCain (or Bush for that matter) had entered the room I would’ve stood up and been courteous with him as much as I possibly could.

I don’t have anything against the president speaking to school children. It was standard stuff in the seventies for we school kiddies to be herded into the school library to watch flimstrips that ended with Dick Nixon telling to be good little citizens.

Perhaps with more audiovisual technology in his youth, Dick Nixon would have followed his own advice…

What’s disingenuous in articles like this is that were it Pres. Bush and Karl Rove who set out such a plan (where kids were to be asked “how can you help Pres. Bush?) the crazy-zealot-factor would be on the OTHER side of equation AND HOW!

Totally agree with all of this:

“Criticism of his policy is fine. But that some consider anything he does regardless of message and intent to be malicious is just the worst type of antagonism. It’s not really about policy anymore but rather about a fixture of hate directed towards an individual. A reverse “Obama Messiah” complex, “Obama devil” complex.”

The GOP is really hurting itself when it dances with the fringe elements of their base.

@Steve, Why does Mediaite keep pretending that all of the criticism is about the speech when it was inflamed by the lesson plan that Arne Duncan sent out? At least try and be fair and give ALL of the facts.

From what I can tell the speech is not controversial. FYI, not all of us who do not agree with Obama’s policies see conspiracy theories in every word.

Unfortunately, this site seems to be short on facts more often than not. The exclusion of the controversial part of this — the lesson plan — is straight out of MSNBC reportage. Just like the Beck boycott, Mediaite has yet to correct the record — Beck brought up Van Jones prior to the boycott, not after it.

@TfT, Unfortunately, you may be right about that. Like I said before, Mediaite is sounding more like Huffpo every day.

Wow, U.S. history teachers are going to be all “WTF OBAMA! NOW OUR STUDENTS ARE GOING TO FAIL THEIR U.S. HISTORY EXAMS!” As they will choose letter “a. students” as the answer to the question “Who fought the Revolutionary War?”

Just to clarify, this isn’t me bashing Obama so much as saying now students will think students fought the British for our freedom because of this inaccuracy in his speech. I know it’s for inspiration but seriously, ROFL.

TfT and Libra Blue -

If you think there was not an uproar about what Obama’s actual speech would be about, then you haven’t been watching cable news on Fox News, CNN or MSNBC, or reading any right wing sites.

Sure, the lesson plan was one aspect of the controversy, but that has been a footnote since the plan to include the “How would you help Pres. Obama” part has been dropped – probably because of the controversy.

It is very likely the text of this speech was released specifically because of the uproar over what he may say to the children tomorrow. Now we know, and it absolutely was, and still is, a major part of the story.

And TFT, we did add that Beck brought up Van Jones before the boycott, although only briefly.

@Steve, I have been watching, and every discussion I have been seeing on this speech go back to the lesson plan they tried to sneak by the American people. Maybe that is the reason why people were suspicious about what Obama might say in the actual speech. Now that it has been released I will be interested to see if the controversy dies down.

The fact that you guys made such a big deal about Beck investigating Jones AFTER the boycott is a major error. Some of your posts and arguments on the Beck/Jones issue made a big deal out of it so I think it should have been mentioned a little more than just “briefly.”

By briefly, I meant Beck had mentioned Jones briefly before the boycott began. But the majority of his focus came after.

I’ll certainly be interested in how the controversy plays out as well the rest of the week. We’ll be monitoring…

@Steve, Now that everyone is covering the Jones resignation have you contacted the news organizations, like CNN and MSNBC, that completely ignored the controversy before the resignation and asked them why they did not cover it? Since the ones who ignored it are the ones who worship Obama I would be interested in hearing their excuses. It sounds like another John Edwards moment to me.

TfT et al… interesting news out from interview with former first lady Laura Bush: quoting the piece at http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/07/laura.bush/index.html

Referencing the uproar over Obama’s address to schoolchildren, which will be aired nationwide Tuesday, Laura Bush said it’s “really important for everyone to respect the president of the United States.”

at least one republican is still sane, thats a start

EVERYONE

I agree with Mrs. Bush — too bad the media didn’t abide by such “a really important” perspective for the last eight years. As for the bru-ha-ha over President Obama’s speech, let us not forget the following (h/t Byron York):

But when President George H.W. Bush delivered a similar speech on October 1, 1991, from Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington DC, the controversy was just beginning. Democrats, then the majority party in Congress, not only denounced Bush’s speech — they also ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate its production and later summoned top Bush administration officials to Capitol Hill for an extensive hearing on the issue.

Yup, GAO investigation and hearings on the hill when GHWBush addressed students. Now….hey, it’s a democrat, so the right wing is just raising a ruckus.