Obama on Education
by tdaxp ~ June 16th, 2008
A friend of this blog (can I say who?) emailed me this story, with the comment I don’t know if this will make you happier with Obama, but I don’t think it’ll make you angrier.
Obama Calls for More Responsibility From Black Fathers - NYTimes.com
Accompanied by his wife, Michelle, and his daughters, Malia and Sasha, who sat in the front pew, Mr. Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, laid out his case in stark terms that would be difficult for a white candidate to make, telling the mostly black audience not to “just sit in the house watching ‘SportsCenter,’ ” and to stop praising themselves for mediocre accomplishments.“Don’t get carried away with that eighth-grade graduation,” he said, bringing many members of the congregation to their feet, applauding. “You’re supposed to graduate from eighth grade.”
My reply back follows:
I’m glad Obama believes an 8th grade education is an expected
accomplishment, not an achievement.A statement by McCain that not littering, say, is an expected
accomplishment, not an achievement. would show equal “bravery.”If Obama wanted to actually speak “truth to power,” he could have said
the same thing about a 12th grade education. But he didn’t.Still, signs are pointing to incompetence and incuriosity (similar to
Bush), rather than a coherent a realistic leftism. I’d take Bush III
over Carter II any day.
Though I guess I exaggerated in one bit: Bush has been vocally dismissive of the “soft bigotry of low expectations.” Obama embraces it, by apparently setting his “expectation” as low as possible.
[1] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2 008/06/19/the-foreign-polic...
June 16th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
Hey Dan Tdaxp, I think you’ll appreciate this story. Headline: “Black conservatives weigh voting for Obama.”
So again I ask: It has been said that if you don’t vote for Obama due to his race, it makes you a “racist.” But what does it make you if you DO vote for Obama because of his race???
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/06/14/black-conservatives-weigh-voting-for-obama/
June 16th, 2008 at 10:07 pm
Dan, your posts on Obama are growing sillier by the day, it seems: so funny that you’ll latch onto a very minute statement, one geared to reach a specific audience and which may have been a purposive understatement — for highlighting the silliness of the underachieving he is attacking in the black community — and then spin that and that alone from the entire speech or article into more blathering of your own.
In point of fact, Obama has stressed the importance of personal responsibility many times during his campaign, and this is only one more example.
June 16th, 2008 at 11:55 pm
Personally I like Rev. Wright’s take on education (and marching bands) better than I like Obama’s. Maybe if Obama wins he’ll appoint Wright to Secretary of Education (Or at least place Wright in charge of a special commission on marching bands)?
June 17th, 2008 at 6:20 am
Curtis,
Certainly one can imagine Obama means something other than the plain meaning of his words. The same is true on his economic policy as well [1,2].
Still, if we want to give Obama credit for being forthright, we should at least demonstrate that he is forthright. If we wish to give Obama credit for attacking the quarter or so of blacks without a high school degree, we should demonstrate that Obama was in such a way attacking them.
I also note that you insult me for writing my opinion on what you call this “minute” statement, but you don’t criticize the New York Times for prominently featuring this “minute” statement. If the Times took Obama out of context, shouldn’t they be criticized?
How is your insult useful to me? How is hosting such insults useful to my blog?
Seerov,
I don’t always agree with your opinions, but I thank you for being polite. I hope Curtis — and all othre readers of this blog — can learn from your example. Unlike some bloggers [3] I don’t like relying on insults to make a point.
That said, Wright’s statement on black-white “learning styles” was overly simplistic. His “jumping on the desks” comment seems closer to distinguishing unruly v. well-behaved students, as opposed to blacks and whites. (There’s no purpose in using a vaguer and more error-prone categorization scheme when you can use a more specific and correct one.)
Relatedly, Half Sigma criticizes Obama for a piece of low expectations that I missed [4].
[1] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2008/06/15/obama-flip-flops-toward-truth.html
[2] http://www.phaticcommunion.com/archives/2008/06/obamas_economic.php#comment-2545
[3] http://www.eschatonblog.com/2008_06_15_archive.html#5821644735356952898
[4] http://www.halfsigma.com/2008/06/obama-scores-points-by-kicking-deadbeat-dads.html
June 17th, 2008 at 6:31 am
[...] Obama on Education [...]
June 17th, 2008 at 11:27 am
If I have erred, I blame it on my tendency to respond in kind. Believe it or not, this is not as hostile as you may think; plus, that’s a tendency I dislike in myself.
However, it’s odd that you can spend so much time on building an imagined identity for Obama — racist, Bush III, befuddled, etc. — which you proceed to attack with silly posts like this one rather than offer substantive critiques of the candidate and the candidate’s actual policy suggestions — but object when the same sort of attack is leveled against yourself.
June 17th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
“but I thank you for being polite.” (-Dan tdaxp)
I’ll have to credit to my parents for this characteristic
June 17th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
But my grammar (or lack of) is all my doing
June 20th, 2008 at 5:56 am
Curtis,
As I mentioned elsehwere [1], a substantive comparison between Barack Obama and John McCain is straightforward. Indeed, I’ve made it. [2] Simply posting variants of “Obama is lukewarm on trade, Obama is lukewarm on immigration, Obama supports legal infanticide,” etc., is not to interesting. Certainly I’m open to the possibility that I’m wrong in this analysis, but there’s not much reason to think so.
What does interest me is the question of who Barack Obama is. What is his style? What are his beliefs? Who does he empower? Right now, “Bush III; Supporter-Driven Consensus; Racialists and the Establishment” seem to be the best answers. If you disagree and have a reason for doing so, please tell. But as we discuss, remember that conversation is a two-way street. In the past you’ve refused to answer questions if you thought that they could embarras your position or Barack Obama.
Seerov,
LOL!
[1] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2008/06/19/the-foreign-policy-advantages-of-obama-as-bush-iii.html#comment-88555
[2] http://www.tdaxp.com/archive/2008/04/06/why-i-support-john-mccain.html
June 20th, 2008 at 6:37 am
Absolutely untrue. Rather, I knew that answering would do no good, an answer would be a non-answer. When you can spin everything to your liking, I have no need to answer; you might as well create the answers you like — those that are “useful” to you — for me.
June 20th, 2008 at 6:53 am
Very dialogical!
Socrates: But what is Truth?
Other dude: You’d just spin my answer any way you want, so I won’t answer.
LOL!
June 20th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Socrates gave few answers.
Or do you think that you are a midwife of truth, drawing it out of others while espousing none yourself? Are you our century’s Socrates?
Point of fact: You may be one of the sophists Plato disdained, who uses rhetoric to “win” rather than to find the truth.
June 21st, 2008 at 9:21 am
Curtis,
As I’ve said before, I want to attack beliefs, so I know which ones are strong enough to rely on.
This is hard to do when people refuse to defend their beliefs, or answer questions about them, such as you have refused.