Patronizing the wingnuts

While it’s better than last year, I was still greatly irked to get this particular message by phone from my local (Littleton Public Schools) school district:

President’s Back-To-School Address

We have been informed that President Obama has recently requested to speak to the nation’s school children in his second annual Back-To-School Address. We expect this event to occur Tuesday, September 14, 2010. All LPS schools will make the President’s speech available to students.

We always honor our parents’ values and choices,which is why parents may choose to opt their students out of this or any other school activity.

We will provide a link for online viewing for our parents and community as soon as the White House shares that information.

We continue to encourage our parents and community members to engage as partners in our students’ education. Thank you for your continued support of Littleton Public Schools.

While this is much better than last year’s “OMG THE HORRIBLE EVIL LEFTIST SOCIALIST MUSLIM BLACK PRESIDENT IS GOING TO INDOCTRINATE OUR KIDS SO WE HAVE TO REVIEW HIS SPEECH BEFORE WE LET THE CHILLUNS WATCH IT!” fiasco, it’s still just plain freaking nuts.

I mean, I had no great fondness for George W. Bush, but if the President of the United States at that time, or any other time, wanted to address the nation’s schoolchildren, I’d be okay with it.  If nothing else, I might want to know what he said, and maybe have a conversation about it with my daughter afterward — but, fergoshsakes, not only are we talking about the President here, the idea that some 10-20 minute  speech to the kids will somehow WARP THEIR MINDS INTO MARXIST MUSLIM ROBOT ZOMBIES OUT TO SPREAD ACORNS AROUND THE WORLD would be an insult to my daughter, and to my own parenting skills and the values I’ve already been trying to instill in her.

So, yeah, they aren’t going to go through some sort of pre-screening and review with the faculty to make sure President Obama isn’t fomenting ATHEISTIC SOCIALIST REVOLUTION to our kids.  That’s a huge improvement from the insanity last year.  But do we have to have the obligatory “If you’re too scared to let your kid be exposed to THAT PRESIDENT MAN GUY DUDE WHO MAYBE WASN’T EVEN BORN HERE then you can opt out” message?

Sure, without it, I have no doubt that some parents would, in fact, be freaking out. At which point, when they call in a dudgeon, the district make it clear than they can, as with “any other school activity,” keep their kids home and safe and swaddled and listening to Glenn Beck speeches or whatever. But by pointedly making it clear, in advance of any protest, that parents terrified of THAT MUSLIM ATHEIST SOCIAL RADICAL IN THE WHITE HOUSE can pull their kids from school at the merest hint that they might hear WORDS DRIPPING FROM THE MOUTH OF THE BEAST, the district is still indulging the insane paranoia that the Right is trying to instill about Obama.

Are we going to go through this every year for the rest of Obama’s presidency?  And then after that?

Disgusting.