School’s out! Rightbloggers decry Obama’s Hitler speech to schoolchildren

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Roy Edroso’s Rightbloggers: Exploring the right Wing Blogosphere appears courtesy of our sister paper in New York City, Village Voice.

Several days ago, the White House announced that President Obama would address kids returning to school via the internet. As he told an 11-year-old in a press opportunity,

his September 8 speech would be about “the importance of education, the

importance of staying in school, how we want to improve our education

system, and why it’s so important for the country.” Related classroom

activities were to be made available via the Department of Education Web site.

This is not unprecedented. In 1988, President Reagan did a speech and had a Q-and-A with schoolkids, which was covered on C-Span, and in which Reagan took the opportunity

to tell the children that “I think there’s more patriotism today. We’ve

been in a time when people have gotten rather cynical about those

things,” promoted “an amendment to our Constitution that requires the

Government every year to balance the budget,” and informed students

that “one of the principal reasons that we were able to get the economy

back on track and create those new jobs and all was we cut the taxes.”

He also explained his opposition to gun control, citing a letter he had

allegedly been sent by a burglar in prison (helpfully adding, “I don’t

know why to this day he ever chose to send the letter to me”).

Those were simpler times; no internet, for one thing, and fewer

clinically mad citizens involved in our national discourse. In our more

enlightened, present era, Obama’s planned address inspired a firestorm

of outrage, in which the President was routinely compared to Adolf

Hitler and his mild address was declared a call for a new Aryan Youth.