While We're On the Subject...

...of things going around the 'Net, it seems like the entire right side of the blogosphere is abuzz with 0bama's decision to talk directly to the nation's schoolchildren. Many point to George HW Bush's speech in 1991, and the Democratic response to it, as evidence that, yet again, the left talks out of both sides of its mouth - it was "paid political advertising" according to then-Speaker of the House Gephardt for GHWBush to speak to kids in 1991, but perfectly fine for 0bama now.

Two things have surprised me in light of this decision. First off, I received an e-mail from the school superintendent (as part of the regional mailing list) where they have decided the following:

In light of the PRSD [our school district] values of Respect, Integrity, Responsibility, and Opportunity, and to ensure that we provide the best possible instruction to our students by previewing materials that are used in school, we plan to tape the address and have it reviewed by administrative personnel to determine the instructional appropriateness of the material. It will be determined to either allow the showing of it with parental notice for certain grade levels, placed on our website so people may choose if they wish to review it, or determined not to be used within our instructional program.

Got that? They're not automatically assuming that everyone in the district is rapt 0-bots who hang on every word that falls from the Anointed One's lips. Now, they may very well decide to show the speech in all classrooms, but at the very least they're putting us on notice that we will be notified if our children will be watching. I was surprised - and pleased - to see that the default response was not to simply show the video. In MA!

The second surprising thing was Mrs. G.'s response to the original idea to show the video in class. I had not said a word about the speech, she asked me what I thought about it and I admitted that I hadn't read enough about it, but that I was naturally suspect any time a politician wants to speak to kids as a general rule. She turns to me and says,

"Well, I guess we're keeping TheBoy and BabyGirl G. out of school on Tuesday, then."

Stunned doesn't even begin to describe how I felt. Mrs. G. is pretty apolitical - she doesn't get into the back-and-forth of politics; doesn't follow the machinations of the political operatives like I, the self-avowed political junkie, do. She's far more indicative of the level of political awareness in this country than I am (although she can name her reps, senators, and the President and vice-president, so she's admittedly quite a bit higher than average there...). If 0bama has lost people like my wife, 2010 is going to be interesting indeed.

The only drawback to the Democrats losing big in 2010 is that it would mean that the fucking Republicans would take over...

That is all.