2010, Looking Back: To Republicans, It Was So Much More Than Just a Speech to Kids

by Noah

Remember when Republicans used to talk about respect for the office of the President of the United States? For the second year in a row, due to the paranoid twilight zone that is their minds, many Republican parents still didn’t want their kids hearing or seeing President Obama’s back-to-school speech. It would be hard to find a stance on any issue that reveals the utter lunacy of average Republicans more than this one. The president’s speech consisted of him telling kids to show up for school on time, study hard, never quit school, and accept challenges, and that more life possibilities are open to those who get an education.

“Hell no, you can't! We don’t want that! We don’t want none of those learnin’ things!”

Before President Obama even gave his talk again, a runaway forest fire of hateful words not only greeted it, but revealed so much about those who feel that, for whatever reason in their dark little minds, he has no right to be where he is.

Old traditions die hard, especially when the drums of racial politics are being beat so furiously by the opinion setters at Fox, at Newsmax, and all too numerous other far right media outlets. Behind much of this manufactured controversy lies the skin tone and even the name of the current president. Having an educated, successful black man as a sitting president living in the White House with his lovely family runs contrary to basic Republican beliefs and, even moreso, their propaganda.

The continued vituperative [look it up, Sarah P.] drum-beating on the speech got even sicker when you considered that 2010 was the second time President Obama was speaking to schoolchildren. He had given the speech in 2009, and there was no recruiting to socialism or islam or gayness. Likewise, dastardly and revolutionary concepts like equal pay for women and voting rights were not mentioned. Republicans knew what Obama was going to say. This speech to schoolchildren is the same every year, regardless of who is president. There are only two differences in this case, and that is skin tone and an “un-American name.” The message that Republicans want to give their children is that we, especially our children, should not be listening to what an “other” or a black man has to say. After all, Obama might in no time have them wearing dashikis, listening to jazz, and smoking dope.

Here’s Newsmax columnist, psychotic hate-monger, and frequent guest on Fox Pam Geller as she weighed in back in March on the president’s speech to public-school children. She also just happens to be the person who proudly started the whole New York “mosque” controversy.

If you’re a child in public school in Obama’s America, watch out. Obama said he was going to build a civilian army -- and he’s using our children. He is recruiting in public school classrooms: I exclusively broke the story about his group Organizing for America is recruiting in the classroom. But Americorps is the primary machinery for his youth army. There is huge dough behind it -- yours and mine. And that money is now being used to mandate service programs that indoctrinate our children to work for “the common good” i.e. socialist internationalism.

Perhaps Geller “exclusively broke the story” because it only existed in her sick mind, but she has a pulpit, and impressionable folks listen to her. We’ve seen their signs at Teabag rallies. We’ve heard their speeches. We can also hear Rush Limbaugh’s take on race nearly every day. Things like ”service programs” and “common good” are terrible concepts to Republicans, and have been for a hundred years. “Youth army”? These people spit out the president’s full name with seething anger, emphasizing the middle one, which means "blessing," by the way, to emphasize their warped concept of “other.”

The mad ravings of people like Geller and Limbaugh were once heard only in mental hospitals or in an alley next to a Dumpster. Now they get prime-time TV positioning with the backing of billionaires.

Given what we hear from Republicans, whether it’s Senator DeMint, or Senator Sessions, Herr Beck, or the aforementioned Limbaugh and Geller, normally adjusted people can’t be blamed for thinking that, to most Repugs, the only suitable job option for a black male in this country is making license plates in prison or “going back to Africa” to be a witch doctor. There was, however, at least one at least somewhat prominent Republican who expressed concern in 2010 about his party’s racism: Jim Greer, a former state party chairman of Florida, of all places. Herwrote to the Miami Herald saying:

In the year since I issued a prepared statement regarding President Obama speaking to the nation’s schoolchildren, I have learned a great deal about the party I so deeply loved and served. Unfortunately, I found that many within the GOP have racist views and I apologize to the President for my opposition to his speech last year and my efforts to placate the extremists who dominate our party today. My children and I look forward to the president’s speech.

I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for Greer to be allowed to run for office again as a Republican. It’s also too bad that he couldn’t find it within himself to say something positive in 2009 instead of this more typical Republican mantra:

. . . taxpayer dollars to indoctrinate America’s children to his socialist agenda.

If you follow this link to the Miami Herald, you just might find that Greer’s apparent change of heart may be due less to conscience than to revenge, but hey, better late than never, I suppose.

I wouldn’t say, as Greer did, that the Republican Party is dominated by extremists. The reality is that it is extremist by definition, period. Having a black man in the White House is more than they can take. As evidenced by near-gibberish, “speaking in tongues” ravings like Geller’s, it has driven most of them into a state of permanent apoplexy. Once again, they are on the wrong side of history, and they are fighting mightily against history’s tide with all the ugliness they can muster. 2010 was the first year in which more nonwhite babies were born in our country than white babies. Sadly, that scares the bejesus out of Republicans as they scream about wanting their country back.

A word to Republicans everywhere: Being a living fossil is never a good long-term strategy, or even strategery, as their former leader used to say. It’s time for Species Republicanis to evolve. Unfortunately, they don’t believe in evolution either.


NOAH'S YEAR 2010 IN REVIEW

Again, after his heroic 12 Days of Christmas Scorn last year, this year Noah is taking his year-in-review lookback in installments, beginning with yesterday's "10 Random Musings."

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