Read what happened when high school valedictorian Ben Bowling gave his speech at graduation, and included an inspiring quote that he attributed to Trump. The crowd cheered heartily.
Then, he said, Sorry, that quote was Obama.
Ben Bowling’s graduation speech was one of the rare instances where electoral polling numbers can help us understand humor.
The 18-year-old is the valedictorian of the Bell County High School Class of 2018, about 80 miles north of Knoxville, Tenn.
The closest a 21st-century Democratic presidential candidate has come to winning the hearts and minds of the people of Bell County, Ky., was in 2004, when John F. Kerry got 39 percent of people there to punch a ticket for him.
Every other race has been (more of) a landslide by whoever happened to be on the Republican side of the ballot: nearly 71 percent for John McCain in 2008, according to the state’s board of elections. Mitt Romney got 76 percent in 2012, and Donald Trump received an overwhelming 82 percent of Bell County’s votes in 2016.
On Saturday, Bowling was slated to give a speech before his cap-and-gown-wearing peers and their families, as he noted in one fourth-wall breaking segment.
Read the inspiriting quote and the crowd’s response.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
So Obama wants people to fight for a seat at the table huh? Both he and Trump (and most presidents before for that matter) are famous for not allowing differences of opinions at their tables. Obama would have most people who comment here removed from any table he was at.
Too cyniical. You can’t compare Obama with Trump and Bush.
Um, yeah, you can and you have to, at least if you want anything to change in the foreseeable future. It’s because – contrary to his campaign rhetoric – Obama continued and escalated Bush’s policies that we now have Trump. Obama campaigned as a progressive touting “Hope and Change”, but instead he brought us neoliberalism at home and abroad, leaving millions dissolute, disengaged and desperate. Those millions didn’t vote Democratic in 2016 and won’t until the Democrats offer something worth voting for. You can’t prop up big banks and corporations, continue the war/national surveillance machine and other right-wing policies and expect people to continue to believe your progressive talk.
But I can . Obama’s failures on many fronts bequeath Trump. Perhaps too many felt nobody was giving them a seat at the table, forget about the head of the table . I don’t attribute that to motivating those that voted for Trump ; they long ago turned to the darkest side of the American experience.
Plenty of voters stayed home from homeowners to workers . People who felt no one had their back . Perhaps a few more voters in Flint Michigan might have come out to vote if they saw their Governor held accountable. Perhaps a few voters in Wisconsin might have turned out if he put those comfortable slippers on. A few in Pennsylvania had he not threatened to ram TPP down their throat with the Republicans in the Lame Duck . . He and Clinton can take a hike .
dienne77
I am glad I cant type fast enough to have plagiarized you .
The valedictorian demonstrated of how prejudice works. The good news is that Ben Bowling was not given a lot of trouble from school administrators, parents, or his peers. I wonder what he will study at the University of Kentucky.
WaPo has a pay wall. I found this on another site:
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Kentucky crowd cheered valedictorian for quoting Trump – then he told them it was Obama
CLEVE R WOOTSON JR
Last updated 13:08, June 5 2018
…This is the part of my speech where I share some inspirational quotes I found on Google,” Bowling said, before doling out the best the search engine could find:
” ‘Don’t just get involved. Fight for your seat at the table. Better yet, fight for a seat at the head of the table.’ – Donald J Trump.”
The crowd went wild, according to a video Bowling shared with the Louisville Courier-Journal. Their applause for the commander-in-chief nearly drowned out Bowling’s next statement: “Just kidding. That was Barack Obama.”
The applause died down to silence.
Someone booed.
But secretly, a few people in the audience were chuckling at the partisan bait-and-switch….
The quote he found on Google was a remark Obama made at a commencement ceremony in 2012. Speaking to graduates of Barnard College in New York, he said “now more than ever, America needs what you, the Class of 2012, has to offer.”
“After decades of slow, steady, extraordinary progress, you are now poised to make this the century where women shape not only their own destiny but the destiny of this nation and of this world.
“But how far your leadership takes this country, how far it takes this world – well, that will be up to you. You’ve got to want it. It will not be handed to you. And as someone who wants that future – that better future – for you, and for Malia and Sasha, as somebody who’s had the good fortune of being the husband and the father and the son of some strong, remarkable women, allow me to offer just a few pieces of advice. That’s obligatory. (Laughter.) Bear with me.
“My first piece of advice is this: Don’t just get involved. Fight for your seat at the table. Better yet, fight for a seat at the head of the table.”..
Yes, Obama is more palatable then Trump, but the difference is in style and flavor, and NOT in subtance and nutrients.
I’ll tell you why.
My wife pointed out the article to me, and I read it last night:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/maureen-dowd-obama-thinks-he-was-too-good-for-america
Anyone who has read my comments about Obama over the years on on the Ravitch Blog knows how and why I feel the way I do about Obama. For the record, I have only voted Democrat my whole life. And for the record, both parties in 2018 suck; they have for the last 16+ years.
Obama and Trump are equally bad, but for different reasons, and, to me, because of radically very different styles. Probably any other president before Trump has had a radically different style. They’ve all had manners and a calculating filter when speaking in public, at least. That’s my guess.
Trump is overtly destructive and plutocratic, and Obama was covertly destructive and plutocratic. They both ignored working class people, they both ignored labor rights, serious redistribution of wealth, and regulation of Wall Street. Obama is a filtered, calculating, smooth and well spoken ambitious politician, as is his wife.
Trump is a crude, uneducated fascist vulgarian who has diarrhea of the mouth. Either way, their policies are NOT interested in the middle class, working class, and the public commons. They both have worked against the public commons. Obama has used his skin color to sell his egalitarian rhetoric; Trump has used his skin color to sell the same rhetoric in a WHOLE other, different, and racist way. They are both exploitive and deceitful, but Trump has a naïve purism about how disgusting he really is. Obama had always kept his real intentions and opportunism under wraps as a strategy to get more done. RttT is a spectacular example of that. The second I found about Central Falls and Obama’s speech about firing teachers was the second I KNEW his governance was going to be more of the same prior administrations crap; he was a shitty GOP wearing an ass’s skin, but reminding people silently that his own skin color was something he could walk on water with.
I fell for it.
Then I didn’t.
As far as I’m concerned, Obama did NOTHING for the blacks. I thought he was going to be the next MLK, only with real political power. He turned out to be something King would object to in terms of governance and poltiicla orientation. The only thing Obama did for people of color was to show than that “You too can rise to power and screw the working class! You can and should have a shot at it!”
Still, I am proud we had a black man as president; that’s where my pride begins and ends. That’s the extent of it. Having a black man became a critical symbol of power and was an action that even the rest of the world paid attention to. But I have long moved on from symbolism and now only look at substance. MLK corroborated my views when he said, “The only color that will matter one day is green!” and “Little children will be not judged by the color of the skin, but by the content of their character!”
Obama and Trump have poor character. Being civilized while having poor character does not cancel out your poor character. Being uncivilized, which Trump is, only peels off the layers to reveal the poor character much sooner. This is trump’s true gift to America. I call it the “Trump Effect”, and it has helped us all realize how much and how quickly our country and culture have declined and how bad both parties are, resulting in much needed and deserved schisms in both.
But what was the most fascinating and horrifying for me about Maureen Dowd’s article (It’s only NOW that she decides to be critical!) is that the READERSHIP’S comments were by and large defensive and excusionst about Obama. They LOVE him and think he’s the bee’s knee’s.
I think he’s the bee’s venom. Maybe it’s not a good analogy, since bee’s venom has real benefits. He’s more like e-bola masquerading as amoxycillin.
I get far angrier at “allies” who turn out to be traitors and deceivers. Once I started to see how he was governing, the honeymoon was over. But that’s the MAJOR problem with Americans who think they are waxing political. They are fixated on pre-packaged personalities, polls, and mystiques far more than policies and governance, and the former is what they pay attention to, if they are paying attention to politics at all. Even EDUCATED Americans do this.
Even if Obama could not get a lot of things done because of forces in Congress and the Senate opposing him, he could at least of become a master rhetorician and always speak about the right policies and values and out the politicians who were giving him a hard time. He could have been a pitbull on the bully pulpit with this major strategy, educating millions of mindsets across the nation with the sheer power of the media, his prestigious positions, and his words.
The first step for getting things changed to is EDUCATE people about different policies, the way Sanders uses Europeans and Canadians to talk about their successful healthcare systems. Obama did no such thing, maybe with the exception of citing Finland (the land of redistributed wealth and very little poverty) as an excellent education system. How pathetic and lame and hypocritical!
But ultimately, the biggest enemy out there is not Obama or Trump or any politician.
The biggest enemy is the IGNORANCE and apathy of the American people . . . . That’s what I’m fighting against, and I have learned how to change my fighting strategies over the years . . .
What do you think?
I agree with your assessment of both leaders, but at least Obama wasn’t an embarrassment for our country. When #45 speaks, it’s like fingernails on a chalkboard. I hope our experience with #45 energizes the young people to show up at the polls, and I hope their more progressive beliefs will push the corporate Democrats out of leadership of the DNC.
The thing is, our country has a lot that we should be embarrassed about. Just because Obama did things – like destroy Libya, Honduras and Haiti, among others – in a more “statesmanlike” way, doesn’t mean that his acts weren’t horrific and embarrassing. Trump just shows the true nature of what is happening. He is barbaric because we are barbaric.
Please, Dienne. I do not take responsibility for Trump’s ignorance, crudity, fakery, lies, and barbarism.
Agreed, Retired Teacher!
Dienne, I think “collectivist” like you. I can’t say that anyone in particular takes responsibility for Trump, but I reflect upon how uninvolved in politics I used to be many years ago, and if I had been more mindful, I perhaps would have been able to educate and sway more people to think like me. In that sense, I take responsibility for how barbaric (and in my mind, how indifferent) “we’ve” become.
I can’t say that’s the case now, given the peers I hang out with in the virtual and real worlds. But I still have contend with people I know personally and intimately who voted for Trump or who still think that Obama is just such a great guy . . . . and who think Sanders is Don Quixote and a mad man with great but impractical ideas.
It’s lonely where I am sometimes, but thank goodness for you and others. So I’m not the only crazy one! I thought I was.
There are more out there like us. Think in so many directions . . . .MeToo, Parkland students, teachers in OK, WV, CO, AZ, etc., the list is long and getting longer . . .
This cracked dam is going to burst at some point, and I hope it’s in my lifetime. It’s getting there.
Very well said, Robert. Thanks.
You do, I hope, know that the Washington Examiner is a right wing rag passed out for free on the afternoon DC metro line? Irregardless of the tenor of this debate, the article can’t be taken seriously as a piece of “analysis.”
And it’s these KY rubes who are getting screwed by Trump. Will they ever learn?
Reminds me of this awesome prank by two Dutch guys: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEnWw_lH4tQ#action=share
Ponderosa: I loved the video. It is my belief that extremists of any religion distort the truth. The Quran is a holy book and the Muslim religion, if practiced correctly, is a religion that believes we need to help those in need and love others. It is not the horrible religion that is too often portrayed. [I have a copy of the Quran.]
Joel Herman, Obama actually said, “I’ll put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself. I’ll walk on that picket line with you, America.” He didn’t say slipper. But, yeah, you’re right that he did put on a comfortable pair of slippers…& stayed home at the White House when all of those teachers in WI were walking in Madison. (&, you know, that’s part of why Ed Schultz was fired from MSNBC, because he asked. “President Obama, where are you & your walking shoes?”
Also, Robert, as for your earliest thoughts about Obama, perhaps, being the next Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr: well, after his pal, Arne, left, he gave us a King…John King.
That was the final slap in the face to American educators, students, parents & public schools.
As the saying goes, “The devil doesn’t appear, looking like the devil. He comes with a smile.”
I agree. Well said!
Traitors are worse morally than the enemy is in a sense. We feel the oppression (as you would from the enemy) from traitors and we feel their betrayal as well. It’s a double whammy. It’s a sinking feeling that lies somewhere between depression, fury, getting kicked in the gut, and hopelessness. But you do grow from it, and eventually grow up because of it. At least I did . . . .
Oh, & a parting thought: Bill Clinton will be on Stephen Colbert tonight, promoting the book he’d written w/James Patterson. Do any of you think Colbert will ask Bill some hard questions? (I think he has a lot of nerve showing his face around in the very midst of the #metoo movement.) As evidenced by a book written {by a well-respected author} several years back, he hadn’t given up his “ways” after leaving the White House, nor after HRC became a senator.
I love Colbert but…nah, no ???
yes, the timing of this book coming out really seems to expose a tone-deaf power syndrome
Yes…DINOs especially “tone deaf,” which is why some heavily DLCC-backed were just defeated in recent primaries (yay!) by REAL progressives.
Reminder for FL readers: get out there & work your b***s off (& donate generously to his campaign) for Tim Canova, running against Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who threw the last primary they were in for her seat. Canova people filed 2 lawsuits: 1st lost, 2nd (involving ballot destruction, so voters/Canova’s supporters, could not prove that election fraud had actually occurred) was won. You would have thought she’d learned her lesson after the DNC Convention debacle in Philly…but…no…
Some people/legislators just think they’re superior to everyone else, totally losing sight of the fact that they are ELECTED &, as such, are
public SERVANTS, beholden to actually SERVE their constituents, & not the other way ’round.
Watching now–oh, Colbert DID go there (talk show hosts better, now, than msm professional journalists!)–good for him; James Patterson sitting there, defending WJC.
Note: they are holding “applause” signs up for audience to applaud most everything Clinton says. Still shilling for Hillary (& don’t we all keep getting e-mails about 2020?).
& then there’s “Onward Together” “movement” (sound parallel to Our Revolution?).
I just LIKE this story because of the kid who did this. (I’m still catching up with yesterday’s news and it’s already today.) I should be doing school work right now that I didn’t finish yesterday…. you are all putting me behind already and, God, look what time it is….4:43 a.m.
Yeah, okay,…Trump, Obama, The Clintons etc… etc…. I just LOVE the fact that a student got up and said something with a POLITICAL connection in his speech. I hope LOTS MORE of our young adults get involved politically. Just like those kids at Parkland. Because, these younger generations are getting royally screwed over by “the system” now in the U.S. (I’ve always loved that phrase “the system”….it’s 1960s talk…it’s “groovy”.)
One of the best things I’ve done in my career teaching 12th grade social studies is to register hundreds and hundreds of teenagers (and some adults, too) to vote. Funny thing is, because I live in a rural area, I’ve probably registered a lot more Republicans. So be it. I’ve cancelled out my own vote over the years many times over. Ha, ha, ha…..
That’s America. (And, you know, the G.O.P. ought to be ASHAMED. Ashamed for trying to keep people from voting.) So, speak out people. Go out and vote, people. It’s stories like this one from small towns all over the place that are going to save our nation.
The youth movement in the USA is a formidable and yet under reported force to contend with!
Sorry for holding you up, John…I am just lucky that Diane started this blog on the cusp of my retirement; otherwise, I wouldn’t have enough time to read all the meaningful posts & comments (except during the summer when, as you all know, teachers just “laze” around the pool {their built-ins in their backyards}). Yesterday, my husband & I were watching “AC 360,” & AC interviewed a student. My husband, who usually doesn’t take notice of such, was very impressed w/the young man, stating,”He’s extremely articulate. Good for him!” I replied, “Yes, the students are going to be (actually, are now) the impetus for change in this country.”
If my husband is impressed…there’s hope (& there WILL be change!).
(Because, as the KY student commented {as well as most of us} in his own way, that “hope-y, change-y thing” didn’t work out very well for any of us.)
To once again paraphrase (or switch out emphasis on words):
Yes, WE can. Yes, WE did. And YES, YES WE WILL!!!
This blog gets my day off to a good though, once in a while, somewhat late start. I did get a lot done today. Take care.
I can see more of this happening since the recent cake Supreme Court ruling on gays is empowering religious fanatics. Trump’s spreading of hatred doesn’t help.
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Brownsburg [Indiana] teacher says transgender name policy goes against his religious beliefs
Arika Herron, arika.herron@indystar.comPublished 6:00 a.m. ET June 5, 2018 | Updated 4:41 p.m. ET June 6, 2018
A Brownsburg teacher is fighting for his job after he says the district forced him to resign over its transgender student policy.
John Kluge, the former orchestra teacher at Brownsburg High School, said the school district’s requirement that teachers call transgender students by their preferred names, rather than those given at birth, goes against his religious beliefs. The requirement, Kluge said, violates his First Amendment rights.
“I’m being compelled to encourage students in what I believe is something that’s a dangerous lifestyle,” he said. “I’m fine to teach students with other beliefs, but the fact that teachers are being compelled to speak a certain way is the scary thing.”
Advocates for the LGBTQ community say that using a person’s preferred name is an issue of respect, not religion or politics….
Check out this story on IndyStar.com: https://indy.st/2M16koc
Here’s something for Trump to brag about!! The US has extreme poverty and nothing is being done to alleviate these conditions. [Bet the Orange one isn’t shown this report. He’d explode and blame it all on ‘fake news’.] Tax cuts ensure governments can’t get the revenue they need to ensure basic social protection and meet human rights obligations. Brag, Trump, about the ‘wonderful Christmas present to the middle class’.
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Report: America’s “Cruel and Inhuman” Poverty Levels…Fareed Zakaria
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights has released a new report on the United States. It isn’t good.
“For one of the world’s wealthiest countries to have 40 million people living in poverty and over five million living in ‘Third World’ conditions is cruel and inhuman,” UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston says.
The United States also “has the highest youth poverty rate in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the highest infant mortality rates among comparable OECD States. Its citizens live shorter and sicker lives compared to those living in all other rich democracies…”
Unfortunately, the report argues, the outlook is just as bleak—and what happens in America won’t stay in America.
“There are also global consequences. The tax cuts will fuel a global race to the bottom, thus further reducing the revenues needed by Governments to ensure basic social protection and meet their human rights obligations. And the United States remains a model whose policies other countries seek to emulate.”