Be True to Your (Socialist) School

There is a scene in the 1984 movie Red Dawn in which our all-American heroes sneak into town only to find it dominated by the Communist invaders. Tanks are on the streets, the local movie house is showing Alexander Nevsky and propaganda posters blaring "A New Man Arises from the Ashes of Capitalism" decorate buildings. In other words, it's pretty much the sort of world wingnuts were expecting to find this morning after President Obama delivered his school speech yesterday.

You may recall that the White House announced last week that the president would give a back-to-school speech telling kids to work hard and stay in school. The right wing promptly panicked en masse, convinced he would tell them to embrace socialism, inform on their parents, hand their elders over to the death panels, worship at the Church of Barack, etc. With parents pulling their kids out of class and principals refusing to show the speech at all, Obama told kids to...work hard and stay in school.

This morning, the sun rose on an America pretty much exactly the same as the one it set on last night. Not surprisingly, this has made no impact on the paranoid right whatsoever.

Florida GOP chair Jim Greer, who started all this nonsense with his primal scream warning of "Obama's socialist ideology," now says that the White House rewrote the speech to take out all the red stuff. Pressed by CNN's Suzanne Malveaux, he reluctantly admitted to not having any actual information to back up his claim.

Not to be outdone, Rush Limbaugh said that Obama's call for students to take responsibility for their education actually meant the exact opposite:

The theme of his speech today was take personal responsibility, which none of his policies encourage. None of his policies even allow it. You want to take care of your own health care? No way! You're going to get a government-mandated health care plan regardless, and you can't do anything about it. You can't assume responsibility for your own health care. You can't assume responsibility for your own job. You can't assume responsibility for your own car. "No, no, no! You're too stupid to do any of that." So he goes out and tells these kids, "You've gotta take personal responsibility"? He never even does that in his own life.

So let me get this straight - after years of Limbaugh telling everyone to take responsibility for their own actions, a president says just that and his response is to go on the attack. It's a logical pretzel, but I gave up trying to make sense of Limbaugh's rants years ago.

The comments on Fox Nation were no more well-informed:

• "I don't care what he says. I do not want to hear it, because everytime his lips move, he is lying. He got what he wanted, all the parents read the dang thing anyway. I do not watch the propaganda on tv...and I wouldn't want my kids to see him on tv. He is on enough, anyway. ...I don't trust him, he is only after power and politics. If the left wants seperation from church and state, I want seperation from school and politics."
• "If we had not complained about his original plan and speech it would not have been rewritten. We would have had a lot of ammunition if he had delivered the original. Alas, it is better to protect our children from this communist. I have no doubt that Obama and his shadow government will most certainly supply plenty of vile and objectionable statements and actions in the near future."
• "Maybe our commie pres. should be taken care of business instead of B.S.ing our children? I don't trust this man ..........or his 'speeches'...or his 'czars'.......or ANYTHING about him! **=="
• "ENOUGH OF THIS LIBERALISM,my granddaughter is 5 years old in kindergarten.I just learned her teacher was doing polling last week on what president they would vote for.They are just starting out the new year and I don't know if this was the build up.They were using jellybeans for whatever reason.I see Obama building his civilian army from the ground up.This reminds me of the Hitler youth.PBS over the week-end showed Van Jones talking to students at another school venue earlier in the year.Parents better take charge and ask questions of their teachers.Don't let the village raise the child.Parents monitor your child's school work.This did not happen overnight,the times are changing,text books are changing,teaching humanism,evolution,and global warming religion in it self.Van Jones,self described communist in the White House.We have fired,sentence people for treason.What secrets has Obama given up? Obama just said this week-end he cannot remember promises he has made after he drinks his wine.Perhaps he should step away from the wine,America is too important to loose; Obama's comment was made at a event.It reminded me of the Kennedy wake to what politicians said about Ted getting too much alcohol in his system to remember what happened the night before. Obama is a radical and there is no other way to put it. If Obama were not the president he should not be exposed to any president because of his radical views,they searched Van Jones out and brought him in,a communist."
  

And so on and so forth, a continuing torrent of deranged paranoia.

Anyway, we now know just what the Republicans stand for - blowing off homework and dropping out of school. Perhaps they should just rename themselves the Grand Obtuse Party and get it over with. At least that way they don't have to learn new initials.