Another member of Congress, said the speech showed "the arrogance of power," and that the White House should not be "using precious dollars for campaigns" when "we are struggling for every silly dime we can get" for education.
These quotes are clearly just ridiculous, right? Well, they accompanied not Obama's speech two days ago, but George H.W. Bush's address in 1991, which was REMARKABLY similar to Obama's speech.
A quote from his speech, which granted was less eloquent and delivered with less style: "If you don't work hard, who gets hurt? If you cheat, who pays the price? If you cut corners, if you hunt for the easy A, who comes up short? Easy answer to that one: You do. You're in control, but you are not alone. People want you to succeed. They want to help you succeed."
I was one of the first to criticize the Crazy Right for getting their hackles up. It's not so easy as saying by forgetting history, you condemn yourselves to make the same mistakes. The fact of the matter is that half of the country are smelly hippie liberals, and the other half are elitist preppy right-wingers or bible-toters. We'll never all agree, but as Rahm Emmanuel said in response to the outrageous outburst last night by Rep. Wilson, "We can disagree without being disagreeable."
I don't foresee a bi-partisan game of hacky-sack in the near future, but a modicum of civility and a common shouldn't be too much to ask for.
Oh, and for a link to Bush's speech, and for the PolitiFact article.
I wouldn't mind losing the civility if we do it civilly, like saying, "Okay, Parliament, now is your chance to yell stupid stuff, and I'll respond to you like I would a Jerry Springer audience member," but I do think that you have to behave correctly in the right place.
ReplyDeleteI think the criticism of the education speeches and the Joe Wilson outburst are two different issues. I think if you criticize the President for making a speech to students, you should also get rid of the Presidential Physical Fitness program, which is clearly the same idea. That's substantive silliness.
Joe Wilson, however, was just silliness of decorum. I enjoy that kind of thing on CSPAN, and I would be open to it, but there's a level of knowing when that's appropriate, and this was not the time. Many of my teacher friends said that they would have given him a time-out for that kind of behavior.
So I say we put Maury Povich on the job to make it more interesting. Paternity tests for everyone!
If we had a parliament type system, I firmly believe that Jesse "The Body" Ventura would be the Majority Whip.
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