A quick round-up of some right-wing efforts to capitalize on the absurd "controversy" over President Obama's planned speech to the nation's students today.
Public Advocate announces that they will be protesting the venue:
Public Advocate volunteers will protest President Barack Obama on Tuesday morning September 8 prior to his speech at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia starting at 10:15 a.m.
Public Advocate volunteers will hold banners that state "Mr. President, Stay Away from our kids" at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Va.
Earlier, on Monday at 5:30 p.m. Public Advocate volunteers posted signs protesting the visit of President Barack Obama at Wakefield High School where the president will be Tuesday morning.
Signs that stated "Mr. President, Stay Away From Our Kids" were posted along Leesburg Pike, Route 50 Arlington Boulevard, and several area schools in Northern Virginia.
The Family Research Council uses the issue to further its own campaign against Kevin Jennings:
In his inaugural speech in 1961 President John F. Kennedy delivered this memorable line
["Ask not..." clip]
Fast forward nearly 50 years and President Barack Obama was poised to ask the nations elementary school students not what they could do for their country but what they could do for their President.
The White House announced that the President would be speaking live to the nations k-6th graders. The Department of Education had prepared a work sheet to accompany the speech in which the children were instructed to engage in several exercises including writing a letter about how they could help the president.
After a fire storm of opposition erupted the White House changed lesson plans and now the youngsters will be asked to consider how they can help themselves achieve their educational goals. Certainly a more appropriate question, but one that is probably more suited for middle and high school students.
However, parents remain considered. Some are keeping their kids home from school on the day of the speech. Over 95% of parents who responded to an FRC survey said the President should not be speaking to children during classroom hours.
Some in the media have decried the parental opposition as partisan. But it is really?
Consider that this speech is being made during one of the most controversial public policy debates in years in which the president has been steadily losing public support for his health care plan.
But even if the speech does not interject policy into the class room of 6 & 7 year old children, when parents consider the agenda of this administration as represented by the presidents appointments to the education department parents have a right to be concerned.
The Secretary of the department, Arne Duncan, has promoted some pretty controversial ideas, like special schools for homosexual students when he was head of the Chicago school system. Even more concerning is Kevin Jennings who is supposedly in charge of the Safe and Drug Free School Program for the Department of Education.
Jennings is the founder of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Educational Network, an organization that promotes homosexuality in the public schools, he also wrote the forward to a book entitled Queering Elementary Education.
This Administration has given parents plenty of reason to be concern over what is piped into the classroom. For more visit FRC.org
And the Liberty Counsel likewise throws in an attack on Jennings while calling the speech an "illegal political move" and warning that "Obama is after our children":
Mathew D. Staver, Founder of Liberty Counsel and Dean of Liberty University School of Law, commented: "Obama has pushed his political agenda to the extreme by forcing himself on America's children. Obama's political agenda on healthcare and his expansive vision for government is being rejected by the American people. Now Obama is after our children, who, like some socialist members of Congress, have not read the healthcare bill. Americans do not appreciate the President's attempt to use our children as political pawns in his game of chess. Mr. President, you must abide by the rule of law and stop this illegal activity. Our children do not belong to you."
