Posted on 03/02/2008 11:16:58 AM PST by grundle
Crowd cheers advice to turn off TV, skip Popeyes for breakfast
FORT WORTH, Texas -- On the campaign trail, Democratic front-runner Sen. Barack Obama talks about how he would use the bully pulpit if president, and he offered a demonstration Thursday when he drew wild cheers as he told a mostly African-American crowd that parents need to shape up, turn off the TV, help their kids with their homework and stop letting them grow fat eating Popeyes chicken for breakfast.
"It's not good enough for you to say to your child, 'Do good in school,' and then when that child comes home, you got the TV set on, you got the radio on, you don't check their homework, there is not a book in the house, you've got the video game playing," said Obama while in Beaumont, in southeast Texas.
"So turn off the TV set, put the video game away. Buy a little desk or put that child by the kitchen table. Watch them do their homework. If they don't know how to do it, give them help. If you don't know how to do it, call the teacher. Make them go to bed at a reasonable time. Keep them off the streets. Give ' em some breakfast. Come on. ... You know I am right."
Can change happen with words? That's a core question being raised about the Obama candidacy.
"I've got to talk about us a little bit," said Obama. "We can't keep on feeding our children junk all day long, giving them no exercise. They are overweight by the time they are 4 or 5 years old, and then we are surprised when they get sick."
Obama -- who exercises and is careful about what he eats -- said obese children need to improve their nutrition habits, invoking the name of a chain that makes delicious fried chicken.
"I know how hard it is to get kids to eat properly," Obama said. "But I also know that if folks letting our children drink eight sodas a day, which some parents do, or, you know, eat a bag of potato chips for lunch, or Popeyes for breakfast.
"Y'all have Popeyes out in Beaumont? I know some of y'all you got that cold Popeyes out for breakfast. I know. That's why y'all laughing. ... You can't do that. Children have to have proper nutrition. That affects also how they study, how they learn in school."
Obama has delivered "tough love'' messages before about personal responsibility, but he seemed to revel in his "truth-telling" while campaigning in Beaumont, on a day that also took him to Austin and Fort Worth in advance of Tuesday's crucial primaries.
As Obama stumped in the Lone Star State to Texas-size crowds -- he packed in 13,000 people at the convention center here Thursday night -- his campaign was downplaying any presumption that he will emerge in a few days as the all-but-certain Democratic nominee.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton "is working tirelessly, as is Bill Clinton, in both Ohio and Texas; these races are extraordinarily tight," Obama said during a press conference on his plane en route to Beaumont. The Obama team was shocked to lose the New Hampshire primary in January, and since then, Obama has curbed the bravado that bubbled up in the Granite State.
Obama resisted an invitation by a reporter to write the Clinton campaign obituary. Said Obama, "Remember New Hampshire?"
It Is!
Confiscate Concealable Weapons.....
Yeah, but what’s he got to say about puddin’ pops?
So, what is he plagiarizing from Bill Cosby now?
You haven’t told me what is libertarian about high taxes.
Taking a page out of Bill Cosby’s handbook...
He is absolutely 100% right yet the dirty little secret of the hood is that most blacks will keep doing the same self destructive anti-intellectual activities they have been caught up in since the Eighties.
We white folks really wish all blacks were as well spoken as Obama,Frederika Whitfield,Suzanne Malveaux and Sidney Poitier but thats not reality.Reality is the two young black girls I saw yesterday on Mac Arthur Bouleveard ready to teat-r each other apart for a verbal misunderstanding.Reality is the young black man telling me last week I needed to check out the latest porn video he had called Big Black Booties.
People on the FR boards seem to disdain the black militant types of the Sixties.Well,people,compared to what I see on the streets nowadays,those radicals were saints and intellectual giants.They at least gave a damn about something other than dope,money and hos.Sure,they were Leftist and often unthinkingly anti-white.That was wrong.
But I miss them.I really do miss them.
I’ll pass on voting for Obama, and I think his libertarian spiel would soon turn into nanny state control, but it is going to be interesting watching a tired, old McCain go up against this scrapper.
I’d never vote for him, but on this topic he’s 100% right. Kudos to the Senator for this one.”
Wonder if Obama got a midnight call from Bill Cosby??????
Hey, one thing at a time. Surprisingly, I have to agree with him on that issue. Maybe when the sky fails to fall in in reaction to the first, he'll add the other things.
Of course, if McCain or any other Republican uttered the same words, they'd scream racism!
TEAR,not teat.Sorry for the typo.
“Y’all” and “got”??? Since when did Illinois become a Southern state? Since he’s lecturing, he should as least use “have” intead of “got”. Next, he’ll be speaking ebonics.
Me, too. At least LeRoi Jones was honest and forthright about his desire to rape white women.
It’s culture, not color, that is the problem. Unless American blacks can find the strength to turn away from Stagger Lee, their lot will continue to be trouble.
The things that Obama is saying here should resonate positively with a huge number of people. I certainly don't recall Hillary ever saying anything like this.
I certainly do recall Hillary saying just such things . . . to a Republican audience. And I thought, "Maybe you'd like to try saying that to a black Democratic audience. I would take courage to say it.Even Bill Cosby gets grief for doing that.
In this case, is this a "Sister Souljah" moment?
It's one thing to say this as a candidate. It is obviously true, and obviously applicable to some in the audience unless it is a firmly middle class audience - which is a lot more reasonable to suppose than would have been the case a generation ago, back before the Reagan Administration.But precisely because blacks have the image of not providing consistent support for scholarly pursuits in the same way that whites - say nothing of Asians - do, I consider this a bait-and-switch. He can say it now, as a candidate. If he is elected, I seriously doubt that he hammers on this theme consistently. It is of course sine qua non for the transition of "the black community" to the middle class that it make the change for which he exhorted here.
But I think of this as more like a New Years' resolution or a political promise than a serious indication of things to come. Because if it were that easy, Bill Cosby's speeches would be commonplace, not remarkable. I think Barak is selling the middle class on the idea that he will tell the underclass to take its cod liver oil. And I don't think that in the long run he will follow through - whether or not his campaign continues to prosper this year.
You need to see a Neurosurgeon stat.
Obama is engaging in a Sister Soljah moment. The notion that Obama will usher in an era of libertarian economics rates right up there with the notion that Ron Paul understands the war on jihadism.
Good luck!
That’s good, but he needs to do a lot more of it. That community is full of self-loathing and blames all its problems on the White boy. It needs to solve the problems that it has brought on to itself, and stop acting like victims.
And we all know how he turned out.
What do these bromides have to do with being president of the United States?
LOL, Obama has some very smart handlers and he is a smart guy with a messianic type aura.
But he is a socialist first and foremost. And he is being totally dishonest when he campaigns as a moderate. Where was Obama when Cosby was getting pilloried for saying the same things?
He was back in Illinois getting a nice side yard courtesy of Mr Reszko, that's where.
The guy didn't even know who Medvedev was and he didn't have the chops to admit it.
He's lying to the democrat party about NAFTA and he'll lie about anything he needs to so that he and his disadvantaged wife can occupy the oval office.
And then he'll act in ways that will put us right back to the late 80's and 90's when jihadists were allowed to murder Americans with impunity.
The guy has never had a regular job in his life. Never hired one employee aside form his Nanny in all likelihood. The most liberal Senator in America campaigning as a centrist is about as far from refreshingly honest as it gets amigo.
If a white guy had said that to a black audience, he'd be strung up.
And what nutritional aspect of chicken is improper?
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