Obama's speech to kids: the financial burden of the protests

With all the furor about the president's speech to schoolchildren next week, it's easy to lose sight of very basic issues that ought to be taken into account as many schools and districts, regrettably, decide not to broadcast the speech to their students. Sure, the political controversy is important, and the precedent such censorship sets is absolutely abhorrent, but there is a simple reason why those schools and districts are doing a great disservice to their students and parents: the real economic cost of boycotting the speech.

At least among those districts, like Palm Beach County, where the speech will be shown but parents can "opt out," or in other places where organized "keep your kid home from school" protests are taking place, what really is happening, as Momocrats blogger Cynematic points out, is a "one-day systematic de-funding of your public schools and mine."

[The boycott is] promoted by childless right-wing white guys (Beck, Hannity) who apparently are anti-education.

All because some grown ups acting more like babies have lost sight of the common good. Have decided that the Party of No comes before country, or anyone else. Including their neighbors. Including your kids.

So keep that in mind. The kid who sits out of public school on September 8 just took money out of the public pot that all his or her schoolmates use.

Parents who vehemently disagree with what the school curriculum can ALWAYS teach their own values at home. Everyone has that right, if not obligation.

But since when did they start messing with the quality of your kid's education? All those $47/days lost to your school start adding up. Music classes or school supplies, band uniforms or special field trips that are already imperiled because of school budget cuts--and now you'll have to make up the difference, somehow, because someone wants to make a statement.

Your neighbor, your kid's friend's parent, the other people at your school are gonna do you like that?

Illuminating, isn't it?

Spot on, Cynematic.

It's disgusting to me that this is even happening, but it's even worse when you consider the damage to every school system and every school, just because a few wild-eyed wingnut fanatics (several of whom happen to have a national forum through TV or radio) hate the president SOOOOOO much that they would push for this "boycott." It didn't happen with Reagan, it didn't happen with Bush 41, it wouldn't have happened with McCain, but it's happening now.

I can't help but marvel, too, at the irony of parents who will keep their children home from public, government-provided schools because they fear some "socialist" message will be transmitted ... maybe by backwards-masking, blinked Morse code, whatever, I don't know. I've already demonstrated that not only will the president not deliver a socialist message, but he's not even a socialist. But try telling that to the people who have been marinating in the constant anti-American drumbeat from the Becks and Limbaughs of the world.

Maybe those districts that are refusing to show the speech altogether, like Collier and Lee counties in southwest Florida, ought to forgo their federal funding from here on out, since clearly they don't have any need for the federal government. (But I guess that would amount to coercion to broadcast the speech, and we certainly wouldn't want to force anyone to listen to the president!)

Look, I know I can't very well wax indignant about disrespect to the president, because this blog hardly has been respectful to President Obama's predecessor. But I never would have told my son (or my daughter, although she was too young for school when Drunky McStagger was in the White House) that they shouldn't listen to a speech from the president. All parents who keep their children home on Tuesday, and even those who "opt out" and have their kids in some alternative activity during the speech, are delivering a chilling message: education doesn't matter, and the president of the United States ought to be shunned.

And, ultimately, that hurts all of us.