Sep 8th, 2009 at 9:58 am
More Lies from Barack Obama
From today’s socialist indoctrination speech:
And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.
My father dropped out of tenth grade and has had a totally solid career as a novelist and screenwriter. These smears against the dropout community need to stop!
48 Responses to “More Lies from Barack Obama”
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September 8th, 2009 at 10:00 am
Hey, Michael Dell and Bill Gates are college dropouts and they haven’t done too badly.
September 8th, 2009 at 10:00 am
You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job.
Bill Gates
September 8th, 2009 at 10:03 am
Shit. Your father is a well-dressed, well-groomed, good looking man. Doesn’t the apple normally fall close to the tree?
September 8th, 2009 at 10:04 am
SLC: They dropped out of college though, which is an entirely different kettle of fish.
September 8th, 2009 at 10:06 am
Of course, you can’t actually stay in school and get a good job either, so what’s the difference?
Really, unless you come from a wealthy neighborhood, the really good jobs are going to be out of reach. You won’t be able to get into harvard if you go to a crap school no matter how good your grades are, and unless you’re born wealthy you’re not likely to ever have the connections to make it. Oh, you can hold out hope that you’ll be that 1 in a 1000000 that managed to get lucky, but good luck. Or you’ll be one of the 10-15% of people who have no job whatsoever.
No, you’ll probably either be stuck behind a counter taken orders from customers that treat you like a shit for 8$ an hour or stuck in a cubicle working for a boss that treats you like a slave for 12$ an hour. Or you’ll be one of the 10-15% of people who have no job whatsoever.
That’s America.
September 8th, 2009 at 10:07 am
A totally solid career? I think not! He can never be forgiven for the turd he dropped into our cultural punchbowl that was his script for Les Miserables. I loathe him for that.
September 8th, 2009 at 10:08 am
Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day! Every child a punkish rock star! Instead of everyone making a living doing each others’s laundry, we’ll tune one another’s guitars and drums!
September 8th, 2009 at 10:14 am
Re: You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job
Thanks to the devotees of cosmopolitan late-capitalist globalization, which has abolished the bulk of manufacturing jobs in America. Let us not forget to place the blame squarely where it belongs.
September 8th, 2009 at 10:18 am
In fairness, he did drop the word “just” in there. Conceivably, you could drop out, bust your hump for 20 years, and then land a job.
September 8th, 2009 at 10:20 am
So you were totally rebelling against your dad when you stayed in high school and went to Harvard? You rebel you.
September 8th, 2009 at 10:26 am
So you were totally rebelling against your dad when you stayed in high school and went to Harvard? You rebel you.
I totally was. My brother hewed to the middle ground, finished high school and dropped out from Yale.
September 8th, 2009 at 10:30 am
Your dad looks like my doctor.
September 8th, 2009 at 10:34 am
Quentin Tarantino, eighth-grade dropout. He’s done aight.
September 8th, 2009 at 10:35 am
Glenn Beck was a high-school drop-out and now he’s the last best hope for democracy.
September 8th, 2009 at 10:36 am
Tarantino’s last job was as a clerk in a video store.
September 8th, 2009 at 10:45 am
Skeptic- I’m not sure Les Mis or Dark Water would have been significantly improved by a High School diploma (though on the latter count I think we can blame the director for some of the problems.)
screenwriting’s weird, I have a lot of friends with BAs and MFAs who are screenwriters, and can’t seem to move past the “sold one unproduced script and now I polish” phase of their career, and we have this joke that what they really need is to go to jail for 3 years for a felony; by the time they got out, they’d be buff, have at least three features written and ready to shop, and every shop in town would be clamoring to hear his pitches. Execs have this weird groupthink about “life experience” that causes them to funnel all of their money into the Diablo Cody’s of the earth.
September 8th, 2009 at 10:52 am
@4: Exactly. Dropping out of college and dropping out of high school are two entirely different things. You may not land a solid job with just a high school diploma but your odds are even worse without one.
September 8th, 2009 at 10:55 am
Execs have this weird groupthink about “life experience” that causes them to funnel all of their money into the Diablo Cody’s of the earth.
I think that’s less of a “life experience” thing and more of “film that cost $8 million and made $200 million” thing.
September 8th, 2009 at 10:56 am
Ambergris #14: Your use of “last best hope for democracy” reminds me of an exchange from Terry Pratchett’s “Hogfather”. In the story, Mr. Teatime has been established as the sort of person who gives psychotics a bad name, and some of his fellow thieves are beginning to worry. Mr. Teatime tells one of them, “Don’t worry. I’m on your side. A violent death is the last thing that will happen to you.”
September 8th, 2009 at 11:06 am
Yes, except your father is not glad he dropped out and wishes he had stayed and gone on to college. I don’t think he’d want you using him as a model. Forget getting a job; college forces you to read things you probably will never pick up again, college encourages you to think and college allows you to interact with others smarter than you are. Yes, Virginia, there really is some value attached to high school and college other than job preparation.
September 8th, 2009 at 11:13 am
My father dropped out of tenth grade and has had a totally solid career as a novelist and screenwriter.
LeBron James never went to high school and he hasn’t done too badly either. Let’s find some successful nursery school dropouts, so we can argue that you don’t need any kind of education at all.
On the other hand, if you want proof that you can be well-educated and still be dumber than dirt, read anything by Matt’s cohort at the Atlantic, Megan McArdle.
September 8th, 2009 at 11:14 am
Obama should do more socialist indoctrination speeches.
September 8th, 2009 at 11:17 am
You don’t need much of an education to become a cop in most places. This is not something I agree with but when Criminal Justice studies began in earnest, and it was a rather new area of academic inquiry back in the 60’s and 70’s, the trend was more towards “professionalizing” policing. Not unlike the trend toward professionalizing the military. But with both “professions” being based on the military model, naturally, it isn’t easy to get away from the “military model” towards the professional model. And some might argue that with 9/11, the bias is definitely for the military model.
Whatever the case may be, a high school diploma is all you need, but many officers do have more higher education now, espicially in urban areas, and some continue their education while OTJ.
September 8th, 2009 at 11:20 am
So selling crack to middle schoolers is not considered a good job now?
September 8th, 2009 at 11:36 am
http://rightwingsuperturds.blogspot.com/2009/09/keep-your-kids-at-home-college.html
this is the video version of the stay at home theory
i like to listen to the whole thing because it illustrates the paranoia and ignorance of the Glenn beck followers.. the so called 9/12 project.
however, if you want to skip to the point of this video where he talks about why you should keep your kids at home go to the 4:40 mark
September 8th, 2009 at 11:49 am
That photo gives indications that don’t bode well for the MYglesias hairline in the future.
September 8th, 2009 at 11:53 am
Genghis Khan did OK for himself, though he never did qualify for a VISA card.
September 8th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
My father dropped out of tenth grade and has had a totally solid career as a novelist and screenwriter.
So your father dropped out and made money by making sh!t up?
Sounds like Anticdata to me.
September 8th, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Cynikal, making up shit is what writers do. Making up shit is what people with imagination do. Making up shit is what every great idea starts with whether Galileo or Gates. And from that shit, roses grow.
September 8th, 2009 at 12:30 pm
LeBron James did attend High School and graduated. He did try to go to the NBA after his Junior year, but he was not allowed to do so, and he went on to lead his team to the State Championship that year.
He did skip college.
September 8th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Yup. Don’t want kids to end up like Karl Rove.
September 8th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Very little of what gets taught in your basic undergrad liberal arts college/university has any direct employment application. There are three employment-related reasons I can think of for going, though:
1. The degree demonstrates to an employer that you have the brains/persistence/obedience to keep at a difficult but demonstrably meaningless task
2. Requiring an unrelated degree helps an employer cut the pile of resumes to a workable size
3. (Most important) Time at the educational institution lets you network with a well-connected social set who will be able to alert you to the real job opportunities that never get advertised. And the more expensive the educational institution the better the resulting network.
September 8th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
I liked his recent book, A Happy Marriage, but did it not creap you and your brother out a bit?
September 8th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
@#23:
Most urban police departments and most (at least in the chicago area) suburban police departments are require a 4-year college degree, actually. If you mean that most police departments away from population centers, I guess, maybe.
September 8th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Obama’s speech reinforces America’s bigotry against physical labor. I know there’s a point to encouraging kids to be ambitious. But honest work, however humble or ill-paid, deserves respect. The skills and endurance of people who work with their hands deserve respect. Let’s stop shitting on those people.
September 8th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Compare Yglesias’ dropout dad, an excellent writer, to his Harvard-educated son, who can neither type nor spell nor employ appropriate grammar.
Kids, drop out of school.
September 8th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
This is one more indication of Obama’s ignorance (or malfeasance).
As President, he should be more concerned about why people can’t get a job with less than a college education. Or why so many jobs now require meaningless qualifications.
The emphasis on college accelerates the division of the society into educated elites versus worthless mopes. Obama needs to develop programs to bring the not-so-bright a measure of equity with the fortunate elites.
September 8th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
My claim to fame is that I was one of the guys who first marketed the Mountain Bike, which takes its name from the company I started in 1979 with Tom Ritchey and Gary Fisher.
I was amused by the fact that the University of California alumni magazine celebrated four of us for our creativity, although none of us went to college.
September 8th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
You left out: “The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.” There he goes again, leaving out the white Christian males !
September 8th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
My father dropped out of tenth grade and has had a totally solid career as a novelist and screenwriter.
He had, it ought to be noted, written a novel that got snapped up, published, and then paid his rent for the next few years. (That Fresh Air interview is well worth a listen.)
September 8th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
I heard that interview on fresh air, his book sounds interesting and he is a pretty decent fellow. I don’t know a past time in the comment section is to libel Matt’s dad.
September 8th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Whenever I hear someone just throw out one of the “so-and-so succeeded after dropping out” anecdotes, I want to rip their reproductive organs out before they pass on their stupidity.
I’ll cut Matt some slack, if only for the opportunity to pass on his surname and confuse another generation of anglophiles.
Using his dad as an example, once out of school, did he sit around hitting on a bong while pinching loose manuscripts off the floor, or was he motivated to practice his craft? If some kid has something that he’s really driven to do, and further schooling is holding him back from that, then go get ‘em.
However, as I watch the spawn of my social circle advance into adulthood, I’m not seeing a lot of striving among the dropouts.
September 8th, 2009 at 7:56 pm
As for The Future Of The Left, the guitar work itself features all the fuzz and sawtooth waveforms that left me cold to most punk, back in the day.
September 8th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
shit, wrong thread.
September 8th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
Regarding comment 42 by cmholm
I agree with cmholm that motivation is the key. And it also works the other way as well.
I myself dropped out of highschool.But i worked hard instead of sitting in my mom’s basement smoking pot.Others who dropped out sadly took the basement route. I have many friends who went to college for a purpose and studied hard .And they did well in life.
But of course there are others who went to college and partied for four years and somehow thought that they were entitled to a $100,000 a year job just because they went to college.
Many of these types ended up living in mom’s basement smoking pot just like the highschool dropouts.
My point is that going to school just for the sake of showing up doesn’t really help anybody.I wish Obama had stressed that point more.I am not criticising his speech.I am just saying that telling kids to “stay in school” is such a banal cliche that one wonders what all the fuss was about, in regards to him giving this speech to school kids.
September 9th, 2009 at 12:19 am
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September 9th, 2009 at 12:35 am
Regarding my own comment #45
I just read the text of Obama’s speech.It’s much different than the way the news services presented it.They made it seem somewhat banal. But i actually think that it was one of the better speechs that i have heard from a president.So i defintly take back my previous comment about his speech being banal.Thats what i get for relying on news media “anylisis” .
As regarding some peoples opinon that he was devalueing manual labor i would have to disagree with that assesment.Even in the lowest skilled construction job you still need to know how to think things through .Some people are natrually able to do that.And some people pick that skill up on their own.But it is a skill that can and should be taught at school.
I wish more young people entering the construction field had learned critical thinking skills in school.Not to mention self discipline and attendance.Those skills are worth thier weight in gold. A boss can always teach someone a specific skill if they have the broader skills that i just mentioned.
I think that was Obama’s basic point. I do not think he was devalueing manual labor in any way.
September 9th, 2009 at 6:38 am
Remember: when he spoke at Yale, the great scholar George W. Bush noted:
Or as JFK said in the same venue:
An education is not essential to success provided you have the inner strength and intelligence to go it alone (see Abraham Lincoln.) For most, however, some help is needed – either the content of the education or the diploma.