I am currently employed at the Los Angeles Times.
Married to author Miriam Pawel, formerly of Newsday.
She left the L.A. Times as labor writer focused on the Farm Worker's Union.
Posted on 09/04/2009 3:43:20 PM PDT by nickcarraway
It was supposed to be the ceremonial equivalent of the first pitch at the All-Star game, but when President Obama visits a Virginia school on Tuesday, he will find himself amid another testy dispute like the town hall confrontations that made August such a hot political month.
Obama is scheduled to visit Wakefield High School in Arlington, Va., at about noon. In his about 20-minute speech, to be released Monday, Obama will encourage students to work hard and succeed in the forthcoming school year. Sounds harmless, but it wasn’t the content of the president’s message that sparked the kerfuffle. Rather, according to conservatives, it was that he was giving a speech at all.
The attacks, including charges that Obama is pushing socialism and big government into spheres better left to the family and the market, were eerily reminiscent of August and the similar conservative complaints about Democratic plans to reform healthcare. The president’s school visit also comes on the day before Obama will address a joint session of Congress on healthcare reform.
There was a time when the first day of school was noted for nothing more than buying supplies, the latest fashions and worrying about what table to sit at in the lunchroom. But the latest furor added a new dimension to political science.
When Obama’s school visit was announced, the Education Department suggested a curriculum that included using the president’s quotes as discussion material. Conservatives immediately attacked the plan and Obama’s visit as another example of...
... Obama pushing his own political agenda and trying to increase the federal government’s role in another area they consider local: education.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimesblogs.latimes.com ...
Huck Finn wasn’t a socialist POS.
What a lovely straw man this author has constructed.
Perhaps a happy medium is Barack reading Huck Finn. He could learn something.
Huck Finn wasn’t a socialist POS.
AND he wasn’t a racist...
What a wonderful idea. I am sure the students never heard that before.
Keep your distance from our kids, commies!
We will fight you!
>>AND he wasn’t a racist...<<
True, true.
What an outright lie.
EGGGGSAKLY!!!!
They’re arguing this is an attack on free speech?
After libs have tossed out Christians, Creationists and Homosexual protesters?
GIVE ME A BREAK!
And it was the NAACP leading the attack against Huck Finn cause they didn’t like the “n word”....
I wouldn't be suprised. The irony is that the story of Huck and Jim forced to travel down the same river together on a raft is perhaps one of the greatest metaphors in American literature. This, of course, is lost on the race baiters.
I am currently employed at the Los Angeles Times.
Married to author Miriam Pawel, formerly of Newsday.
She left the L.A. Times as labor writer focused on the Farm Worker's Union.
0be is the Huck Finn of Presidents.
Hey!
O’Bummer!
Leave those kids alone!
I’m confused.
Aren’t the same folks who want Huck Finn banned from schools, mostly the same ones who worship BamBam?
Now in this case X is not the presendency in genral, but is a specific canidate, that at least half the country does not find inspirational in the least.
This is a public school that tax payers are being forced to pay for. While I think this is wrong all by itself, it is especially wrong when political propoganda for a particular politcal party is introduced into the agenda and then shamelessly defended as if it were neutral.
If Nixon made me do a writing assignment when I was these kids’ age, man would I hate him today. But I probably wouldn’t remember why...
Zero Hussein I knew Huck Finn and you are NO Huck Finn!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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