The take-away message from Pres. Obama's address on education to the nation's young people? That Americans can turn even an uplifting and intelligent statement about the importance of education into an occasion to express profound ignorance and stupidity.
What a shame that the main thing people are talking about post-speech is not the substance of the message or how we might truly reconstruct our generally rotten cultural attitudes towards education - a good education being in everyone's interests and all - but rather how the speech miraculously did not demolish the psyches of America's young people turning them into Christian-flesh-eating commie-zombies serving the nefarious will of the Dark Lord of Islam.
Really, we're not just talking about doing stupid things from time to time, making mistakes and then awkwardly learning from them. We're now talking about a deep-seated idiocy. Call it what it is. It's not holding different but equally legitimate views, or agreeing to disagree, or Jesus tells me so, and we ought to be fair and let these views have their say. The freak-out over Obama's education message, over death panels, and doctored birth certificates is idiocy. It belongs on "Jackass," not "Meet the Press."
When a large chunk of the country can't figure this one out even on the question of education and that it's good to know things and stuff, the further fact that the splendid irony of it all has appeared to go completely unnoticed suggests to me that we're not going to solve the problems of education any time soon and very likely never.
UPDATE:
More in a similar vein here, just discovered via 3QD.
4 comments:
Just like the Armageddon that would befall us in the year 2000, the speech that was suppose to indoctrinate our youth. Now who was spreading the baseless lies…..hmm…..oh ya, “Fake News”. Is anyone real surprised? Too funny.
Obama's giving the terrorists exactly what they want. Remember what W asked of us on 9-11. Americans need to be out buying what they're told to on TV, and instead of studying, kids need to be working at least part time, so retailers can afford to keep their stores staffed. We don't want our kids growing up to reject the credit card.
So true. I thought Bush's post-9/11 "Go Shopping" speech was far more edifying. I went out immediately and bought a case of 1982 Château Margaux.
I'm sure corking fees have a lot to do with the size of our refund checks.
Post a Comment