UPDATED: Pam's House Blend has the text of Obama's speech
here. Reading the speech only reenforces my thoughts on why the GOP's lunatic fringe is so unwound by the speech - because it's a black man delievering a message that, if heard and followed by students from other minority groups, indirectly might further undermine the white privilege the wingers cling to.
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I haven't commented until now on the increasing bat shittery - to use one of Pam Spaulding's terms I love - of the lunatic base of the Republican Party that is utterly melting down over President Obama making a speech about personal responsibility and remaining in school. This topic is precisely what the GOP claims to support, hence why the sobbing nut jobs and irrational foaming at the mouth? People in other parts of the world must truly look at the USA and think that their is some insanity inducing agent in the water in some locals. How else to explain utterly bizarre and insane conduct?
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Personally, I believe a couple things are in play: (1) as the photo above indicates, I believe that not so subtle racism is at play, and (2) with the exodus of moderates and intellectuals from the GOP the base of the GOP is becoming
increasingly ignorant, uneducated, paranoid and down right pathological. I truly fear where such detachment from reason and logic may lead. The
Seattle Post Intelligencer has a column that looks at the insanity of the far right which acts as if Obama is doing something that other presidents have not previously done. Here are some highlights:
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He pledged to be "the education president," so it was fitting in 1991 that President George H. W. Bush gave a speech to America's schoolchildren aimed at motivating kids to "strive for excellence."
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Eighteen years later, President Obama is about to give a similar talk that will encourage students to work hard, set educational goals for themselves and take responsibility for their learning. The president's persist-and-succeed speech, set for Sept. 8, has produced a wellspring of hate from the far right. Hate talk radio is even urging parents to keep kids home from school.
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Far-right media are engaged in niche marketing. The likes of a Limbaugh, O'Reilly or Beck attract a hard-core audience, deliver designated devil figures, and play on fears of gullible, resentful -- and largely elderly -- people. With Obama's speech to students, other goals come into play. With right-thinking Supreme Court justices leading the way, conservatives have long sought to limit young peoples' free expression, from censoring student newspapers to penalizing students for holding up signs off campus.
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The 2008 Obama campaign energized the young in numbers not seen since the 1960's. At an Obama rally in Bend, Ore., last year, a 17-year-old high school student served as warm up act, delivering a cogent analysis of all that the Bush administration had wrecked. National Review online picked up my article. It condemned the kid, which put him on the receiving end of hate mail.
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The Obama speech seems largely an appeal for students keep on truckin' and never get discouraged. It's not all that different from the thoughts of Bush Sr. Or the stay-in-school message delivered at East High School in Anchorage last week by Alaska's new GOP Gov. Sean Parnell. Yet, in Anchorage, right-wing parents have demanded that the speech be blocked from the classroom. Districts in Missouri, Texas, Virginia -- even the president's home state of Illinois -- have opted not to show it.
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The action of Medina, Ohio, schools superintendent Randy Stepp is a typical cave in: Civics education -- not just sex education -- is getting censored by crazies.
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The far right has been on a rampage this summer. "Birthers" have disrupted lawmakers' town meetings with the false claim that Obama was born in Kenya. Opponents of health care reform have carried posters depicting the president as The Joker from Batman movies, even as Adolf Hitler.
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The vast majority of Americans are civil and tolerant. Most people want presidents to succeed, even if their candidate came up short in the last election. The country loses footing when an administration flops: Look at the last eight years. Instead, the far right and its media megaphones -- notably Fox News -- debase debate, spread lies, and demean a president 200 days into his term.
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Joe Scarborough, congressman from the Republicans' Class of 94, Florida conservative, now host of "Morning Joe" on MSNBC, speaks the truth to the crazies -- and their enablers. "Where are the national GOP leaders speaking out against this kind of hysteria?" Scarborough asked Friday in a Twitter entry.
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Truth be told, the national GOP leadership has become just as nasty and debased as the Party's base. Ignorance and religious extremism are now the hallmarks of a party that once prided itself on educated and thoughtful conservatism. Those days are gone, perhaps forever.
For the record, I am not anti-American by any means. I believe that the USA is a remarkable nation in many ways. But at the same time, I believe in objective reality and that often the best patriots are those who questions what the nation and its leaders are doing in the name of all citizens. That said, late last month I wrote about the the myth of American exceptionalism which is so popular with the Christianists, the Tea Party and Sarah Palin's followers. As noted in that post, it's a myth, it's a dangerous myth, and it blinds people from facing reality. The just released results of a test called Program for International Student Assessment, known as PISA, display unsettling results. The test is given to 15-year-old students by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based group that includes the world’s major industrial powers, and the results show just how unexceptional the USA is in terms of knowledge. The New York Times has further details. 
