The End of the School Speech "Controversy" (For Now):
When Barack Obama makes his mundane speech on studying hard in school in a little while, it'll be the end of one chapter of one of the most idiotic right wing uproars in a while. With all the dignity, wisdom, and precision of a room filled with diapered toddlers and sharp knives, some conservatives have manipulated people's simple-minded, uninformed idiocy for their own gain. And it ain't like the people have responded gracefully. Like iguanas at breeding season, fucking in scaly madness, parents and politicians alike have given us a mountain of lies and crazed conspiracy theories. Fox "news" has been, as usual, Nutzoid Central, caressing this completely manufactured controversy like a swollen clitoris sore from so much rubbing.

Here's Rick Santorum on Fox "news" last Friday: "[T]o many parents in particular, it's a little threatening to have someone come in who's so polished, who's so cool and come in front of their kids. And then when you see the curriculum, you see some of the things that have been said that he might be -- might be talking about, which are all about him, it's just -- it's a little creepy. It just -- it's a little unsettling for parents." Remember: the guy calling something "creepy" is the same dude who was "kissing and cuddling" the fetus his wife miscarried, having his kids do the same. He even sang it a lullaby.

But the parents are the best. Between the weeping tools (watch the video and see if you can pinpoint the moment the husband realizes what a horrible mistake he's made) and the almost-open racists (like the woman on Fox "news" who admitted that she just "trusted" Ronald Reagan more and would have let her daughter hear him speak), it was a parade of ignorance expressed as reasonable discourse, like listening to a particularly talented chimp try to jabber a manifesto of shit throwing. Most parents, though, probably just don't give a fuck, as mom Hilary Valente demonstrated: "First of all, I think a lot of people are very confused. When I mentioned these issues to other parents, a lot of them didn't even know really what was going on. It seemed like you had to be on top of it to figure out what exactly -- what's going to happen on Tuesday."

What's going to happen today is that a lot of schools aren't going to show the speech, a lot are, most students will be bored and restless, a few will be inspired, a few will try to get on the news by pretending to be outraged. And the school year will go on.

By the way, free, public schools? That's right out of The Communist Manifesto. Karl Marx listed it as one of the major steps to socialist revolution. Uh-oh. When Obama says, "Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country," it's gotta be a call to proletariat uprising.