Friday, September 04, 2009

Outrage over Obama school speech was missing during Bush and Reagan school addresses

Good point!:

In my deep memories of elementary school and junior high I had remembered listening to Presidents Reagan and Papa Bush speak to all of us on television. I had recently doubted those faint memories as I told myself that surely those two Presidents must not have spoken to school children. After all if they had attempted to speak to school children their conservative base must have decried the "indoctrination" of school children and threatened to pull their kids out of school in response. It turns out I was wrong on both fronts. Presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush did in fact speak to school children in national addresses, and conservatives at the time did not react the same way they are reacting to the Obama school address.

In the video below Fox News (known for their liberalism) reports that both Reagan and Bush addressed the nation's schoolchildren. Now conservatives may claim that the situation was different in that the Reagan and Bush addresses were non-partisan. First, most of the objections I have seen about the Obama address are not about the content of his message but rather the whole idea of students being "forced" to listen to the President. Second, President Obama's address much like that of Reagan and Bush is being previewed as a politically neutral message about hard work, setting educational goals, and staying in school. For anyone who doubts the truthfulness of that claim they can check the White House website on Monday where they have promised to pre-release a copy of the speech for parents to see.

In the video, Fox's Goler notes Bush, Reagan also gave speeches broadcast to classrooms nationwide:

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The GOP when not in control of the Whitehouse, are a bunch of whiney babies.