Obama education speech sparks controversy

Last week I was really geared when I heard that President Barack Obama was going to give a speech to students about education. I thought to myself, “What a great opportunity for young students to be psychologically manipulated into believing liberal propaganda! I hope he talks about how we all need to serve the party, and then we’ll all sing chants about the glory of the middle-class American dream!”

Then Glenn Beck woke up in a cold sweat, screaming. Meanwhile Keith Olbermann dreamed contentedly. Of course the reality was neither, but then again, something would inevitably come out of the squawk box that would show how terrible the state of cable television news is … Well, there’s always Al-Jazeera.

Sharing in their mutual phantasmagoria of punditry rhetoric, both Fox News and MSNBC have once again sliced through the issue, only to hit each other with samurai swords of stupidity. In the week leading up to the speech, which aired Tuesday, it seemed every major cable news channel had something to say about the despotic/non-existent hidden message in President Obama’s speech. Ranking Florida Republican Party Chairman Jim Greer made statements telling parents to keep their children at home, lest they be indoctrinated by state-sponsored writing assignments. Loose-lipped liberals called those Republicans racist and I looked up the speech on the internet (an advance copy of the text was released before Tuesday in a press package, which was what caused all of the hubbub).

The speech was actually quite boring compared to the President’s usual fanfare. It contained absolutely nothing in it that resembled political slant. It had an anecdote about how the president himself had a hard time in school, made some mistakes and was lucky to have his mother to help him get an education. He then espoused the values of hard work and asking for help. He also told kids not to bully others or play too much Xbox. Clearly there was some bias toward Wii and PS3 owners but I digress.

Along with the speech was a set of optional writing topics distributed by the Department of Education. One of these topics questioned, “What can you do to help the president?” Clearly, as a K through sixth-grader, I can help the president by working hard in school. Though the message was re-phrased to say, “help me in my education goals” just to keep it simple for the kids under age 12. Otherwise they would have immediately voted democrat in the next election, when they turned 16. This was the only item in that press packet that was cited as disconcerting.

After having gone through this charade of a news story, I implore all The Commonwealth Times readers to stop watching cable television news. These news anchors are so desperate for ratings they have lost their common sense, they are just adding to the problem by airing this stuff. Any person who can read, anyone who can hear for that matter, can understand this speech is not biased. If someone wants to keep their children at home to protect them from being brainwashed by the president’s speech encouraging hard work, then I pity that child’s circumstances. Worst of all, the reaction to this fear tactic was to lambaste the fear-mongers, giving them more attention than their false flag warranted. These irrational fire-starters should have been ignored, as people who are so clearly overwhelmed with paranoia and under-whelmed with intelligence that their heads would cave in if they didn’t have support beams made of (prop)aganda.

So ignore cable news. Don’t let these people waste your time or make money from selling you stories that have less journalistic integrity than the commercials between them. I have to go throw out my television now.