I am posting tomorrow's blog today. Something unnerving is happening in the community of Santa Clarita, California, an affluent suburb just north of Los Angeles.
In the school district where I work, parents are calling in, voicing outrage and protesting that the high school refrain from showing President Barack Obama's televised "Speech to Students" this coming Tuesday.
Maybe I haven't lived long enough, but I can't recall ever hearing parents object to their children listening to a speech by an American President. What's equally shocking is that their objections are being accommodated... and this is a public school.
And I never heard a single liberal parent in Santa Clarita (I hear there are some) voicing complaints about the eight years of Bush State of the Union Addresses we'd show in classrooms. Hmmm...
Sorry, but we have places for kids whose parents object to their exposure to the current and legitimate American Government: it's called "home school."
Or maybe "Ruby Ridge."
I spoke to the switchboard operator at the school, and she told me, "I have had tons of parents calling very upset about this."
Tons.
Parents.
Are you fucking kidding me? You actually found someone to breed with?
I can't entirely blame the principal for giving in. But I can be disappointed in the pervasive spinelessness in education today; that when a seated American president decides (as many have done in the past) to speak directly to young people about the value of education, about participating in our great democracy, about bettering the individual as a means to better the nation -- and a chorus of ignorant, misled, ill-informed, dare I say racist and bigoted idiots can call the shots over an institution established by the state to promote the general welfare of kids and society... well, that's an attack on schools every bit as shocking as someone walking through the gates and carrying a weapon.
So on Tuesday, maybe we'll be showing Triumph of the Will instead of President Obama in Santa Clarita.
