President Obama’s administration released the transcript of his hotly contested school speech today at noon, sending media pundits into a tizzy.
Conservatives searched for subversive messages and liberals declared the whole thing politically sterile. And given the disproportionately prominent mention of Google, Facebook and Twitter, the digerati rejoiced at their apparent importance in the scheme of American accomplishment.
The message is simple. Stay in school, work hard, work harder if you’re facing adversity or challenges. If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for your country.
But what Obama really means is, if you won’t do it for yourself, do it for me. As the American president, he is the closest human embodiment to the nation we have. And in this modern-day fireside chat, he is acting less in the role of President, and more as paternal figure.
The analogy makes sense. Unlike any other president before him, Obama overcame the same tragedies our poorest, most downtrodden citizens will face. Words that ring hollow from the mouth of Bush or Carter elicit tears coming from Obama:
I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.
And he does get it. The medium is the message, and Obama is the medium. He is the manifestation that all the propaganda you’ve heard about American achievement and equality is real, and he is the human form of that possibility.
But like a selfless father archetype, he has not made these sacrifices for nought. He has made them all for this future, for this day, for you, it would seem, and now it is the responsibility of every child in the nation to fulfill her potential. She owes it to Obama.
Stymying the evangelistic right, Obama’s proclamation that we each have a purpose smacks of both Calvin’s predestination and Marx’s "from each according to his ability":
Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is.
At times, Obama contradicts himself. He repeats his admonishment against supporting irresponsible pipe dreams, perpetuated by ghetto culture and the entertainment industry. It’s a message first debuted at the NAACP centennial:
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.
The message is almost certainly targeted at America’s minorities and poorest classes. And in some ways, it is a rejection of consumerist American culture. Yet two paragraphs later Obama references the trials and tribulations of Michael Jordan, the most successful professional basketball player in US history.
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."
He’s caught between wanting to identify with his audience and telling them their idols are false.
Obama ends with a strange rendering of American achievement:
It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.
Few Revolutionary soldier were students, and thousands of kids were pulled out of the school during the Depression to earn pennies to help support their families.
And as enamored I am of social media, Google, Twitter and Facebook are hardly the pinnnacle of our national achievement. Only Google is even profitable, and Twitter has fewer users in the school-age demographic that Obama is addressing. Moreover, the low-income children that Obama is targeting throughout his speech are more likely to use MySpace than Facebook, according to social network researcher danah boyd.
Is this a ploy to win over early influencers in the digital media before the mainstream gets to work on Tuesday morning?
The speech is not perfect. But in spite of shortcomings, its fundamental message, the stoic prophet of that message, and its vast reach will ensure that it will have a positive lasting effect on our nation’s children.
They will remember where they were when their teachers pulled them out of class to watch, and they will remember what they felt. They may not remember the message itself. But if just a fraction of our schoolkids pick up a fraction of Obama’s message, the effect will, in fact, be revolutionary.
And improving nationwide school performance without spending a taxpayer dime? That’s something every political party can get behind.