Some are disappointed in Obama. Others, me among them, are surprised that he can still get up in the morning given the outrageousness of the attack that has met his every move. Nowhere is this more patently obvious than this business about his speech to school children. From Michelle Malkin:
Obama served with Weather Underground terrorist and neighbor Bill Ayers on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge education initiative. Downplaying academic achievement in favor of left-wing radical activism in the public schools is rooted in Bill Ayers’ pedagogical philosophy. Obama served as the program’s first chairman of the board, while Ayers steered its curricular policy. The two oversaw grants to welfare rights enterprise ACORN and to avowed communist Michael Klonsky – a close pal of Ayers and member of the militant Students for a Democratic Society. SDS served as a precursor to the violent Weather Underground organization.
"Downplaying academic achievement in favor of left-wing radical activism" appears to be the right’s current hate meme – the ad hominem attack perfected by Karl Rove during the last administration:
An Ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument. Typically, this fallacy involves two steps. First, an attack against the character of person making the claim, her circumstances, or her actions is made [or the character, circumstances, or actions of the person reporting the claim]. Second, this attack is taken to be evidence against the claim or argument the person in question is making (or presenting).
They reframe everything he says or does as having an ulterior motive, to press some agenda left over from a time when he was barely a child – the boiling pot of the 1960’s. What’s interesting is that they are not only distorting the present in these attacks, they are distorting the past as well as the present. I don’t recall "Downplaying academic achievement in favor of left-wing radical activism" being much on the table then either. And notice Michelle’s use of buzzwords – "welfare," "avowed communist," and "militant" as if the tumultuousness of the 60’s was some attempt to take over America and change our government, rather than an attempt to get America back.
Of course these current attacks are ridiculous, but , but this one takes the cake. And they’re so loud with these antics, I suppose it makes us think that everyone on the right is this crazy. That’s not fair, anymore that their conflating Obama with the SDS and the Weathermen is fair.
So, here’s the punch line. I live in the most Republican place in a Republican place. These people were Republicans during the Civil War, which was not the case in most of Georgia for sure. And, 100% of the letters submitted to our weekly paper get published. There’s not a single one about Obama’s school speech, nor about the Health Care debate this week. Maybe this hate-attack is finally losing its appeal…
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