by Harrison Price

Lefties say Conservatives are making it sound like Nazi indoctrination and Righties are saying it is like Nazi indoctrination.  In case you haven’t heard, Obama is going to talk to K-6th graders.  Neither side is completely right or completely wrong but what this little speech does show is that the belief in the omnipotent “talking head” era has passed.

It used to be you read your morning (or afternoon) newspaper, read Life Magazine once a week, and watched a network news program.  If you were very interested you could watch a program on PBS like Crossfire to maybe get some more knowledge or, if you were a true “rebel” you read a free newspaper.  And that was how people learned how to think about topics.  The wise editor someplace would choose what you would learn.  And so it was for many, many years.

After the 60s we all learned about “deconstructionism” whereby nothing really had a set meaning.  Thus the Mona Lisa was not universally a great work and somebody who splashed some paint on the canvas could be mentioned in the same breath as a great, well known painter.  People came up with all sorts of “new meanings” for poetry and prose, and up became down and in became out and college students everywhere were able to cram as much BS into their papers as they could.

The talking head era was drawing to a close.  Its death knell happened when people could go onto a website and see a 50 year, well known writer’s work displayed next to somebody you’d never heard of.  Both, because they appeared next to one another, seemed to have equal authority.  It took the individual reader to determine if what was being presented to them was valid or not.

It is ironic, in this post-1984 1984 world (written in 1948 but ahead of its time) that Liberals, who often put down Conservatives for trying to enforce “universal” values (also called “family values”) would be shocked that the image of a U.S. President on a television monitor telling young children what he thinks is important in life would be objectionable.  After all, when the President of the United States says something, even if it sounds odd, he or she does speak with the authority of the office and most kids in that age group still believe in Santa Claus.

Democrats never believed George W. Bush when he talked about his core beliefs yet they think it is odd many Americans don’t want Barack Obama speaking about what he thinks are important in life.  The ironies are numerous.

Obama may have had good intentions (his “community organizer” history is coming out) but it just looks so nefarious to many who are part of a society that rejects the talking head.

Even if Obama plays it “safe” and says things like it’s good to help your neighbors, you should look both ways before crossing the street, and when you grow up pay your taxes, people will still be upset.

Had places been reversed and George W. Bush was the man on the television in schools across the nation, we’d be hearing the same things from Democrats that we hear now from Republicans.

France’s Charles de Gaulle once said:

“How can anyone govern a nation that has two hundred and forty-six different kinds of cheese?”

And so it has become in America, minus the cheese.