Really?

Can anyone explain to me how a child watching a single speech can be indoctrinated?

If you believe that possible, please do not allow your child to watch a single Britney Spears video or he/she will instantly want to be a trash talking, dressing, acting bimbo.

Don't let them watch a single Shrek movie or they will instantly believe in ogres and start displaying rude behaviors because they've been indoctrinated into grossness.

Don't let them watch even a TV commercial for Secret Life of American Teenagers or they will get pregnant/impregnate another child as soon as the commercial is over.

If you are allowing yourself to be afraid of the president giving a speech to school children, please sit down for a quiet moment and be honest with yourself and answer this question: Ronald Reagan and both Bush presidents addressed the nations' schools in the same way, would/did this upset you as much as Obama doing it?

For those of you claiming that you "carefully" view "everything" that your child comes into contact with and are using this as an excuse "we don't know what he will say" - a copy of the speech is going to be made available via the internet on Monday. How about you wait until then to condemn the man?

Americans have got to get a grip on themselves and stop jumping from hysteria to hysteria (Obama's gonna kill your momma!) (He's going to indoctrinate our children!) (He's going to take away all the guns!) (He's going to outlaw Christianity!)

Aren't you tired of having to summon the mental and emotional energy for these made up "crises"? Aren't you tired of jumping through the hoops of media exploitation?

Well, then stop it. You can look at things calmly, you know. You can look at both sides of an issue, you know. You can determine who is to gain by saying what and determine if the latest outrage is just manufactured to distract us, distort a point or even just to create a "buzz".

You can tell the difference between a policy that you disagree with and something innocuous like "study hard in school". Sometimes a pep-talk is just a pep-talk. And you do have the capacity to differentiate.

I've been saying "really?" so much now that it has lost meaning. What has not lost meaning is this from my mother, a usually unflappable, down to earth person: "This feels like the 50's all over again." (Meaning: McCarthyism and as American culture is notoriously immune to learning from the past, I'm not surprised.)

I was no fan of our previous president, that is true. But I would never have had an objection to him addressing my child in school, which I believe, in fact he did.

No worries though, the man-child is still a strong minded liberal who can think through an issue on his own, who has compassion for others and is not afraid of people who are different from him.

Loki sez: Thor was sitting on mommy's lap when Obama was on TV. I think he's a zombie commie cat now.