Our political Quote of the Day comes from White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on the furor over President Barack Obama’s upcoming speech to school kids, as conservatives around the country are calling districts and demanding that their kids not be forced to sit through what some of them are calling socialistic political indoctrination:

“I think we’ve reached a little bit of the silly season when the president of the United States can’t tell kids in school to study hard and stay in school. I think both political parties agree that the dropout rate is something that threatens our long-term economic success.”

[For background on this controversy and an extended roundup read our previous post HERE.]
Meanwhile, the Politico notes that this controversy continues to grow:

School districts from Maryland to Texas are fielding angry complaints from parents opposed to President Barack Obama’s back-to-school address Tuesday – forcing districts to find ways to shield students from the speech as conservative opposition to Obama spills into the nation’s classrooms.

It also notes this:

Obama’s speech to students was first announced late last month but criticism grew this week, as conservative commentators including Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin said Obama was trying to improperly influence the students. Beck even urged parents to take their children out of school on Tuesday to protest Obama’s speech.

……Obama isn’t the first president to be criticized this way… President George H.W. Bush made televised address to students in October 1991 as campaign season was heating up. A handful of Democrats denounced Bush’s address as pure politics. Bush asked students to “take control” of their education and to write him a letter about ways students could help him achieve his goals, strikingly similar to Obama’s messages.

This whole incident is further evidence of the power of talk radio as a kind of town hall to influence and get the message out to conservatives, who do respond.

But there is a danger in this for the GOP as party — and it comes within a few days.

Obama’s speech to school kids would generally have been a ho-hum, who cares-so what kind of story — a kind of boiler plate, expendable, pro-forma story that might have gotten a few paragraphs in newspapers’ increasingly shrinking news holes, or a few seconds (a minute at most) on TV.

But now newspapers and broadcast networks will want to see the speech, which the White House has consistantly said will contain certain elements and not a political component. There will be great mainstream and new media interest in what he says and coverage of the speech will be multifold now.

So Obama gets two high profile speeches this week: a speech to kids (that would normally have not gotten much play or attention) and his speech to Congress on health care reform.

What Obama says to the kids about staying in school won’t matter to those who already detest him and consider him a usurper or extremist. (Do you want to take bets now on how Sean Hannity frames it?) But those who support him or who don’t agree with him or who might not even like him but don’t detest him and don’t consider him a Nazi or Socialist but someone who sees things differently, could look at that speech and conclude:

Remember the story of the boy who cried wolf?

GO HERE to watch Joe Scarborough say this:

Seriously, why don’t we want the president of the United States, any president of the United States, delivering the message to kids: work hard, stay in school, succeed…And, again, there are certain people that are going to try to whip up ratings by comparing him to Chairman Mao. It’s asinine and it’s just making themselves look stupid. Go ahead, get your ratings if you want: you’re just screwing your political party.

It also shows a reporter from The Politico who is also dismayed over the firestorm.

UPDATE I: Here’s the embed so you can watch the Scarborough segment:

UPDATE2: Here’s a TV news report on the controversy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rifng9cRqRE&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.google.com%2Fnwshp%3Fclient%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial%26hl%3Den%26tab%3Dwn&feature=player_embedded

JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief

Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.

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