Okay, not exactly revealed… more like his remarks to kids that will be delivered on the first day of school tomorrow were released by the White House today, as promised. But remember, it was only done so under relentless pressure from “real” Americans (aka “teabaggers”) and “concerned parents” — because God only knows what shameless propaganda, depraved secular-humanist messages, and Stalinist coercion might have been included in the speech otherwise.
Instead, it’s pretty much the innocuous sort of peroration that most rational, sane people expected:
[N]o matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.
And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.
You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.
We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.
Not of course that the positive, inspirational nature of the speech will mollify Obama’s critics. Oh noooo…. Not by a long stretch. Fox News is still promoting the following (via LGF):
Over at the aptly named “Hot Air” the resident kerners are go:
I’ve run the speech through a word frequency counter and found the following results:
• 56 iterations of “I”
• 19 iterations of “school”
• 10 iterations of “education”
• 8 iterations of “responsibility”
• 7 iterations of “country”
• 5 iterations each of “parents”, “teachers”
• 3 iterations of “nation”In other words, Barack Obama referenced himself more than school, education, responsibility, country/nation, parents, and teachers combined. And to think that people accused Obama of self-promotion!
Face it. No matter what Obama does, the wingnuts will invariably find sufficient fault with it to stoke their perpetual sense of outrage and demented paranoia. Who knows exactly why? Perhaps because, as John Cole suggested earlier today, “THEY ARE CRAZY PEOPLE.”
Red Tory v.3.0.3 
Some of the best speeches and books are those that invite criticism and discussion. If we wish to ban everything that a few people may find offensive, there would be nothing worthwhile to view or read at school.
Ban the “Harry Potter” series.
Ban “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
Ban Obama’s speech.
Ah, the banalities.
Ah, the bananalities.
I’m disgusted by the right wing lies/misinfo in this country since Harpo. All I can say is I’m glad I don’t live in the US. But, unfortunately, those twisted, brainwashed and yes CRAZY wingnuts have spread their ideology to Canada. Wish we could create another country and ship them all there.
Its late & I’ve lost all patience with these retards.
The time will come when those children who were pulled from school to protect them from the imaginary big bad (black) wolf will grow up and start thinking for themselves. THAT will be interesting.
Some may say that these same children may never learn to think for themselves and they are probably correct about some of them, but many will. I have been pleasantly surprised more than once by seeing children who show levels of maturity and wisdom far outdistancing that of their parents, if fact, in spite of their parents.
“Barack Obama referenced himself more than school, education, responsibility, country/nation, parents, and teachers combined.”
oh, fer fucksake. do they stack the deck much? the word “you” is conspicuously absent from that list.
KEvron
….145 times, and 48 uses of “your”, the self-centered bastard.
KEvron
“you” was. by far, the most frequently used word in obama’s speech. “the” was the word which reagan used the most (167 times), while “you” charted at 27 (no “your”, but “yourself” and “yourselves” accounted for 3 words).
KEvron
and yes, i know the word count is a thoroughly superficial way to critique a speech (talk about taking words out of context).
KEvron
I wonder what’ll they think now – in an interview (I only saw an excerpt on CNN) Laura Bush thinks Obama’s speech for the kids is terrific.
Are they going to attack the saintly Laura Bush now? Actually, Laura Bush has been very fair over the years when asked questions about Hillary, Obama, etc.
The right-wing nut fringe is still outraged:
KEv — Excellent point. I hadn’t noticed that (although, to be honest, I didn’t pay much attention to HA’s ridiculous list).