With all the furor over President Obama’s speech to the nation’s schoolchildren gradually dying down around the country, it’s still raging in La Mesa:
Trustees of the La Mesa-Spring Valley School District met in a special session on Labor Day and voted to prohibit their schools from showing President Barack Obama’s speech Tuesday to district students.
The address, which the president delivered at Wakefield High School in Washington, D.C., was televised at schools across the country. (SD U-T 9/9/9)
If you are interested in their litany of excuses, you can read the whole article. My favorites were, “it will take too long for the students to walk to the cafeteria” and “20 minutes was too long.” Instead of simply allowing the students of the district to watch the speech along with the rest of the nation, the district apparently plans to “lesson plan” around it…ie, shelve it for a while until people forget about it.
Yet, this is part of something bigger. It says something quite disturbing about where the Right is taking the nation. Included in that is the right-wing media. For example, peep this article at the OC Register. Not only does the Register write an article about a completely unscientific “poll” but it tries to infer that somehow 26% of OC residents would support a white supremacist party. Now, I realize that there are some crazy people in this state, but I can’t believe the numbers are really that high.
I suppose there was always some level of guttural discourse about politics, it’s basic to the game. However, if we are to really address the problems of the 21st Century, we have to think about the issues, and talk about them, like adults. Enough with the scare tactics and race baiting already.
To my fellow Californians who are thinking of taking a sign with a Hitler mustache on Obama, some unsolicited advice. Take a deep breath. Think about whether you really want to compare your president to a man who killed millions of people for no reason other than he didn’t like them. Godwin’s Law needn’t always be true.
The difference is that “teabag” conservatism now has FOX, ClearChannel and “racism.net” for allies, in addition to The Arkansas Gazette… my, just look at those picket signs from fifty years ago. They look so… familiar.
We’ve integrated, schools, jobs, and housing over the last half century. But we crossed another line when we integrated The White House. That was the last thing on my mind when I voted for Obama. But it looks like we cannot choose our fights. If we want to break the power of Wall Street and Militarism, we’re going to have to break the power of racism at the same time.
It’s never been more obvious that these Amerikaaners are whipped up and and exploited by the fat cats… this could be turn out to be a golden opportunity to beat them both.
well said.
the problem is that we’re finally seeing just how angry and divided the country is, and we have a group of elitists who will fan and exploit it for their own gain and play to racist fears.
The other day I was wearing my “Adama for President” t shirt and got called a slew of homophobic and racist slurs by those la rouche douches. I was really amazed.