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If I was an 8th grade student and my parent "opted out" of my seeing Obama's speech, I would be doing everything I could to see that speech anyway and figure out what "forbidden fruit" I was missing. By making a big stink about this, conservative parents are giving the speech far more significance in their children's eyes than if they just said nothing. Those kids are going to talk about the speech with their friends who did see it far more now than if they had all just watched it together. They're going to try to find a recording of it on YouTube. They're going to be looking for hidden messages in it when they do find a recording somewhere. Instead of being a (possibly boring) event during their school day, its going to take on a tremendous significance. And for the smart kids, when they see that the speech is really innocuous (which I'm sure it will be), its going to cause them to disregard their parent's other chicken little hysterias, some of which maybe shouldn't be ignored. For some it may even make them seek out other Obama speeches or Obama statements to try to figure out what is so "bad" about what Obama says. This brouhaha about Obama's speech may be the best thing to happen for the next generation of progressives :)
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