Obama school speech released; Update: Obama’s priority in speech

[bijou]

Fox News has the big story of the day — the release of the Barack Obama speech to the nation’s schoochildren students tomorrow.  As expected, it focuses on achievement and perseverance, two less-than-controversial qualities of success.  It avoids any hint of proselytizing, and the removal of a very ill-considered exhortation from the official study guide to ask students how they “can help President Obama” should make tomorrow’s speech a non-event … for those students actually attending school tomorrow.

In fact, had the White House skipped the study guide and simply released the speech from the beginning, it seems unlikely that this would have created much controversy at all. Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush both gave similar speeches in similar circumstances to students without creating a lot of hard feelings. That isn’t to say that their political opponents all yawned: ...   pdate: Commenter Faraway counts up references to Obama and to country, and finds 55 self-references and four to the nation.

Update II: 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!....

read the rest and the text of the speech here

[thundley4]

I still wouldn't bet that this is the original speech he planned to give.  Just call me cynical when it comes to 0Bama and his motives.

[Linda]

I still wouldn't bet that this is the original speech he planned to give.  Just call me cynical when it comes to 0Bama and his motives.

Funny...that was the same thing I was thinking....

[Peter3_1]

does anyone think  what is delevered tomorrow has any resemblance to the original planned speech? 

[thundley4]

does anyone think  what is delevered tomorrow has any resemblance to the original planned speech? 

Yes. I do think he will follow the released remarks to a T. This speech and the lesson plans that were released were a nice deflection from the health care debate and the resignation of Van Jones. 

[Chris_]

I still wouldn't bet that this is the original speech he planned to give.  Just call me cynical when it comes to 0Bama and his motives.

Wanna see how cynical I can get?  I wouldn't lay odds that this is the speech that is finally broadcast tomorrow.  This is something of a false trail, in order to put the parents at ease, and potentially reduce the "absenteeism" tomorrow.

[thundley4]

Wanna see how cynical I can get?  I wouldn't lay odds that this is the speech that is finally broadcast tomorrow.  This is something of a false trail, in order to put the parents at ease, and potentially reduce the "absenteeism" tomorrow.

Can you imagine the resultant furor if he did go and give a "Support Me" speech?

[Chris_]

Can you imagine the resultant furor if he did go and give a "Support Me" speech?

Would it be any less than the crapstorm he's got coming over another televised arm twisting of Congress for socialized healthcare?

The Kenyan's already awoken the 'sleeping giant', maybe he thinks if he pisses in our ear, it won't swat his ass all the way back to a hut outside of Nairobi.

[thundley4]

Would it be any less than the crapstorm he's got coming over another televised arm twisting of Congress for socialized healthcare?

The Kenyan's already awoken the 'sleeping giant', maybe he thinks if he pisses in our ear, it won't swat his ass all the way back to a hut outside of Nairobi.

I think doing that to the kids would piss off more people than his speech to congress will.  Especially if it's shown that he lied about what he is going to say.

[Chris_]

I am just glad our county will not be showing his little speech