Many conservatives are frothing at the mouth over President Obama’s plan to speak to the nation’s school students on Tuesday.
For some of these folks, this is fresh froth. But for many, it’s leftover froth from the 1,001 other things the president has them frothing about.
The idea that the president of the United States makes an address to the school children of America doesn’t seem so terrible to me. After all, he is the president of the United States.
From personal experience as a classroom speaker, I wish the president good luck. Because if you’re not LeBron James or one of the Jonas Brothers, 94 percent of American schools kids don’t care what you have to say.
My suggestion to the president: either bring a really snazzy attention-grabbing prop (maybe bin Laden’s toes) or tell a lot of stories about snakes.
Kids love stories about snakes.
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The president may want to explain to many of America’s little tykes why their parents are out of work. It would be nice if he could do so without calling former President George Bush a @#^%$*&^@$&.
That seems to be the default position this administration takes whenever it is pressed on its shortcomings.
The economy?
It’s @#^%$*&^@$& George Bush’s fault.
The war in Afghanistan not going well?
It’s @#^%$*&^@$& George Bush’s fault.
Burt Reynolds’ crummy facelift?
@#^%$*&^@$& Bush.
REM’s last five albums?
You got it. Bush.
How much longer will anyone other than the true blue Obamaniacs (and Michael Stipe) accept this reasoning?
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Back here in Whitfield County, Whitfield EMS staged one of the best comebacks of the year, beating two competitors 5-0 to win the coveted (and lucrative) county ambulance contract. Whitfield EMS employees celebrated their job security, though one has to wonder how Hamilton Medical plans on making the new (less profitable) deal work. One doubts costs will be cut at the higher echelons of management.
In other local government, the city of Dalton cast a talent net nationwide in its intense search for a new city administrator. Remarkably, the two best candidates in the whole dang country turned out to be a couple of local folks. And get this ... neither one has ever done this kind of work before!
It’s great to live in a community on the cutting edge of innovative thinking.
• • •
Two very famous Americans were buried this week.
The first was Sen. Ted Kennedy.
The second? Former President Andrew Jackson.
Wha .... excuse me?
It wasn’t Andrew Jackson. It was Michael Jackson ... the singer? Dang, he’s been dead a long time. I guess it took awhile for the relatives back in Detroit to get there.
Ted Kennedy did a very terrible thing all those years ago at Chappaquiddick. He did bad things — political and non-political — after that, too.
He also did some good things and died leaving family and friends (from both sides of the political aisle) who fiercely defend his memory.
He was a superb politician. Serving in the Massachusetts-designated “Kennedy seat,” he didn’t really have to fear any political strife back home. So he was free to romp and stomp on the national stage, which he did to great effect for many, many years.
It’s a shame the Republicans haven’t had a version of Ted Kennedy, who rallied his own troops with passion and bombast while picking off key people in the GOP camp, when the tactical need arose.
Kennedy was buried in Arlington, near his brothers. That causes me some unease, but he will not be the first or likely the last scoundrel to join the honorable dead on those grim grounds.
Jimmy Espy is executive editor of North Georgia Newspaper Group. He blogs at Espysoutpost.blog spot.com
