Obama Gave His Education Speech (The World Did Not End)

My sons watched President Obama's back-to-school speech today.

The world did not end. My sons did not turn into zombies. They didn't even ask me if they could go to the library and check out a copy of the Communist Manifesto.

Instead they heard the President of the United States saying the SAME stuff their mommy tells them all the time:

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work — that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you're not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won't love every subject you study. You won't click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won't necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That's OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who've had the most failures. J.K. Rowling's first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

No joke, I tell my sons about Michael Jordan and J.K. Rowling all the time. When I was a teacher, I told my third grade students similar things. It's called building intrinsic motivation.

As for the speech? Read it for yourself to see what was so terrifying. Is this not what American children need to hear?

I'm still trying to figure out what was SO not okay about the President of the United States giving a speech to the nation's children. I'm supposed to be proud of being an American. My children are supposed to be proud Americans. Well how are we supposed to get that pride? Through Fourth of July cookouts?

No, we get it through developing a sense of civic duty. That whole asking what you can do for your country thing. Real talk - what ALL of us can do to help America is get serious about education. There are no more jobs for high school dropouts. Companies want ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANTS to have master's degrees these days!

But instead of asking what our President is doing about serious issues, and actually educating people about the truth, our media chose to waste a week of news-time showing white Americans engaged in hunting-for-Frankenstein's-monster behavior.

Dear White Americans, Frankenstein does not live in the White House. It's just a man who happens to be black and named Barack Obama -- and he got elected by a diverse constituency which includes your fellow white brothers and sisters.

Look, I know you're scared and you want your country back. You want Thomas Jefferson to rise from the grave, make more babies with Sally Hemings, crack his whip and make all the black folks fall back in line to the way things used to be. But let's face it. Jefferson has been dead a LONG time and the so-called good old days are never coming back.

As for your media idols, folks like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are laughing all the way to the bank. Here's the thing about the pundit class that spends their time making a lunatic fringe seem like mainstream America: These people enjoy living in exclusive communities and they send their kids to the most elite schools. The same elite schools the wealthy liberal politicians they supposedly hate send THEIR kids to!

If their kids don't do well, that's OK because it's not a meritocracy for them. All they need to do is make some phone calls and their child will get into a school, get an internship or get a job. Their children have choices that my children do not. Their children have choices that the average American does not. Maybe they didn't want their kids to hear a message that encourages them to think of someone other than themselves and their own bottom line?

America, I hate to say it but, you're playing yourself, homie.