Why the over-reaction to President Obama's Speech to Schoolkids?

Fascinating to see the intense reaction to President Obama's plan to speak to schoolkids today. When GHW Bush spoke to school kids in a similar address, only the Democratic leadership, National Education Association and the mainstream media complained. No big reports of parents planning to keep their kids out of school. No big fears that the President would try to "indoctrinate" children. The controversy (including a GAO investigation and a congressional hearing) came after the speech, not before.

The controversy about President Obama's plan grew even more when a school showed this video to kids, triggering widespread commentary on the religious nature of devotion to President Obama shown during the campaign and his early presidency. Some schools decided not to broadcast President Obama's speech, prompting this presidential reaction. Heh. Some schools are re-scheduling the speech for later, to fit in with other lesson plans (which parents seemed to like). Some schools haven't even started yet.

Actor Adam Baldwin notes that most of the controversy stems from the creepy "cult-of-personality" lesson plans which were issued before the speech was released. Once these plans were dropped or modified, much of the opposition to the speech disappeared. Some parents planned to keep their kids out of school even after these lesson plans were dropped or modified.

President Obama has now taken the unusual step of releasing the text of the speech in advance. Lots of conservatives really like it. Other conservatives and libertarians had alternative ideas. Tigerhawk thinks outside the box. Pej points out some more outside-the-box thinking. And Dr. Helen has another interesting point of view. Michelle Malkin asks why D.C. kids should listen to President Obama - he didn't listen to them.

I think Jim Treacher hit the nail on the head concerning most of the residual resistance to kids listening to the President speak:

If you spend the summer calling people terrorists for disagreeing with you, they might not want to give you any alone time with their kids.

PRESS REACTION
And then there is paranoia about paranoia. As is typical nowadays, the New York Times tried to make the more mainstream critics of the plans seem really, really loony. And it wasn't even Maureen Dowd writing. Of course, this brazen misrepresentation of Mark Steyn's words was re-worked from the "Newspaper of Record" and reported in other papers. The Times has finally corrected their misquote. Corrections probably won't happen in a lot of the papers which relied on the Times instead of an original source for their information. And the MSM says you can't trust the Internet? Somehow, the layers of fact-checkers in the mainstream media don't seem to be doing as good a job of fact-checking as the scary blogging denizens of the internet are doing concerning issues like this.

UPDATE: Here's MSNBC at its superficial and inflammatory best, with John Harwood telling parents that if they objected to Obama's speech (no mention of the creepy lesson plans) they're too stupid to raise their children. I think Althouse's phrase "paranoia about paranoia" also fits nicely some of the other comments made about the Right in these clips. What do you think?

E.J. Dione blogged immediately after the speech:

Upon Barack Obama’s election, even my most conservative friends who supported John McCain said Obama could do a world of good for poor children in the country by stressing the importance of education, hard work, staying in school and taking responsibility. Yes, those are often thought of as conservative values.

But when Obama proposed to do just that on the first day of school, the far right — without asking any questions or seeking any information — decided to pounce, on the theory that everything Obama did should be attacked relentlessly as part of some secret and dangerous ideological agenda.

Captain Ed's response:

That’s simply not true, and it undermines the entirety of Dionne’s argument. The basis for the eruption of criticism came from the study guide provided to school districts a week ago, which contained a curious instruction to teachers:

“Write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the President. These would get collected and redistributed at an appropriate later date by the teacher to make students accountable to their goals.”

First, there’s a question of incompetence in this study guide. Who produces a study guide for a document or lesson that has yet to be created? Had the White House included the speech with the study guide, a lot of the criticism could have been avoided right from the beginning. It took six days for the White House to produce the speech after releasing the study guide and creating the firestorm of criticism. Help the President do what, exactly? Without the speech, who knew?

That set the stage for the speculation that ran wild, especially regarding how teachers would hold their children accountable for “help[ing] the President.” In the US, students do not help individual politicians, nor do they pledge allegiance to them. Had the study guide suggested ways to help the school, or the community, as Obama’s speech to them did, it would have been completely uncontroversial. Instead, the White House left the definite impression that they wanted teachers enforcing service to Obama himself, which understandably gave parents the creeps — as it should everyone.

Far from pouncing without information or evidence and going off half-cocked, as Dionne accuses, it was the White House that went off half-cocked and created its own problems. In the absence of the speech and the appearance of the study guide advisory to enforce service to Obama, it’s difficult to see how else parents would have reacted. Parents should question whether schools are indoctrinating children with political messages rather than educating them, and when a proposed syllabus advises teachers to make a homework assignment of working for a particular politician, no one should be surprised at the controversy that will inevitably erupt.

Update: I heard a report on NPR about the controversy about this issue. They mentioned some of the controversy after the speech by GHW Bush. Their coverage was far more balanced than that of CNN and the biggest newspapers, let alone MSNBC. This radio network may be responding faster that some of the commercial media to the national distrust of the mainstream media. A pleasant surprise. They keep this up and I may have to move them out of the "Left" designation in my sidebar.