Barack Obama, sex-ed, and kindergarteners

July 19, 2007

The media has gone after Democratic presidential candidates for some pretty silly things. John Edwards’ haircuts have drawn more attention than any other campaign-related story this year, and the coverage of his home sale was truly ridiculous. Barack Obama received unwarranted scrutiny on some harmless investments. A story about Hillary Clinton’s charitable family foundation sparked a front-page story for no apparent reason.

But this has to be right up there among the dumbest news items of the campaign thus far.

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., told Planned Parenthood Tuesday that sex education for kindergarteners, as long as it is “age-appropriate,” is “the right thing to do.”

“I remember Alan Keyes … I remember him using this in his campaign against me,” Obama said in reference to the conservative firebrand who ran against him for the U.S. Senate in 2004. Sex education for kindergarteners had become an issue in his race against Keyes because of Obama’s work on the issue as chairman of the health committee in the Illinois state Senate.

“‘Barack Obama supports teaching sex education to kindergarteners,'” said Obama mimicking Keyes’ distinctive style of speech. “Which — I didn’t know what to tell him (laughter).”

The headline on the ABC News piece reads: “Sex Ed for Kindergarteners ‘Right Thing to Do,’ Says Obama.”

Far-right blogs, naturally, pounced. One said, “The liberals are literally becoming cartoonish parodies of themselves.” Another said Obama is “absurd” and “scary.” Another said Obama was engaged in an act of “self-sabotage” in order to help Hillary Clinton.

This is all terribly silly.

When it comes to kindergarteners, Obama has storks, not sex, in mind.

When Obama’s campaign was asked by ABC News to explain what kind of sex education Obama considers “age appropriate” for kindergarteners, the Obama campaign pointed to an Oct. 6, 2004 story from the Daily Herald in which Obama had “moved to clarify” in his Senate campaign that he “does not support teaching explicit sex education to children in kindergarten. . . The legislation in question was a state Senate measure last year that aimed to update Illinois’ sex education standards with ‘medically accurate’ information . . . ‘Nobody’s suggesting that kindergartners are going to be getting information about sex in the way that we think about it,’ Obama said. ‘If they ask a teacher ‘where do babies come from,’ that providing information that the fact is that it’s not a stork is probably not an unhealthy thing. Although again, that’s going to be determined on a case by case basis by local communities and local school boards.'”

In addition to local schools informing kindergarteners that babies do not come from the stork, the state legislation Obama supported in Illinois, which contained an “opt out” provision for parents, also envisioned teaching kindergarteners about “inappropriate touching,” according to Obama’s presidential campaign.

There is no scandal here. Based on the ABC headline, and the far-right response, one might be led to believe Obama’s talking about giving condomns to three-year-olds. He’s actually talking about accuarate, scientific information in schools — as compared to abstinence-only education — with age-appropriate lessons. It’s not exactly shocking.

And yet, ABC apparently went for shock value, and given the response, it’s hardly a stretch to expect equally vacuous news outlets from picking up on the story.

It’s going to be a long campaign, isn’t it?

Sex + wingnuts = spontaneous hilarity every time. I wonder sometimes how these idiots manage to reproduce given how f***ed up they are about the subject.

As someone with very recent memories of three-to-five-year-olds, I can tell you they really aren’t the least bit interested in the biology of sexuality. Poop and farts, OTOH are the source of endless humor to them.

  • When Obama’s campaign was asked by ABC News to explain what kind of sex education Obama considers “age appropriate” for kindergarteners…

    Wow! Actual journalism!

    This has me thinking, though… the Kama Sutra is a picture book.

  • Yes, it is silly. Yes, it is based on distortions.

    But lets be serious here. This is the big leagues, you have to know what you are doing. What to tell 5 year olds in school about babies, or even about “inappropriate touching,” is not a big campaign issue that no candidate could possibly avoid. So Obama voluntarily goes there, and when he does,

    Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., told Planned Parenthood Tuesday that sex education for kindergarteners, as long as it is “age-appropriate,” is “the right thing to do.”

    Can anyone who has paid a moment’s attention to the political process even glance at that quote and not see problems written all over it?

    I am happy to defend the substance of what he was really saying. And I am happy to suggest the rules of the political “game” in this country seriously need changing. But when you decide to get in, you know what the rules are as they stand today. And I have to call it as I see it: this was just terribly careless campaigning. This is how you lose news cycles having to defend foolish word choices; this is the sort of thing that robs momentum.

  • Now, kids, (showing pictures)

    This is a Catholic priest (shows picture of Cardinal Egan).

    This is a picture of a Republican lawmaker (show picture of Mark Foley).

    If any of these people touch you down there, you should tell your mommy or come to me if you’re afaid to.

    Any questions?

  • And the MSM becomes a bit more de-Pravda’d. Soon we’ll be able to read the headlines and know exactly what has happened because reality will be the exact opposite of whatever they tell us.
    (This is the only reason to subject oneself to the front page of the Washington Times.)

  • appropriate comment, zeitgeist, but wouldn’t it be far better for someone like obama to campaign the way candidates should campaign, and keep calling people on it when they make an issue of it. otherwise, it will always be this way, and we need to change it sometime.

  • Ouch- Check out the comments at that ABC website. Obama is getting hammered by the simple-minded masses. The need to teach kids about “good-touch, bad-touch” the best spin-tourniquet to put on this foolishly self-inflicted political wound.

    I have to agree with Zeitgeist. Why would he even go there? That’s an amature’s mistake.

  • I don’t suppose the corporate media will spend even a tiny fraction of the coverage this non-story gets on this bit of Obama news:

    http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/UrbanPovertyOverview.pdf

    It’s a seven-page proposal on how an Obama administration would attempt to address poverty in cities. Granted, covering this might require something more than rephrasing press releases from the Family Research Council and the Obama campaign, so it’s probably not happening.

  • ‘This is all terribly silly.’

    No it isnt. Old and addled voters, who often only read the headlines(like Bush), absorb that stuff and the more egregious it is, the more likely they are to retain it. I thought I had her protected from it, but in 00 my mother(82 at the time) voted for Bush for fear of a tidal wave of partial birth abortions.

  • Candidates will make as much headway with this as Alan Keyes did in Obama’s Senate run. All Obama has to do is to remain rational about it, and if that doesn’t entirely work, start out a response to the right wing media with something like, “Do you think the epidemic of pediphilia is an issue worth getting teachers and potential victims, our children, involved in? Well, I do. Oh, you do too? Then how would you suggest doing that and at what age would you start talking to kids about it? Good. I’m glad we agree.”

  • Amateur’s mistake? Obama participated in an interview, answered questions in a reasonable way that the vast majority of Americans would agree with, and ends up slimed because of an intentionally wrong headline.

    And today the Post started a supposedly serious piece on Edward’s antipoverty tour by bringing up his expensive haircuts again – in the lede.

    There is nothing benign or accidental about this at all. Here is political reporter Marc Ambinder at the Atlantic admitting the obvious about the press and Edwards (in a piece about why they aren’t doing the same thing to Romney about his expensive makeup): “There is a difference in the political reality: fairly or unfairly, a healthy chunk of the national political press corps doesn’t like John Edwards. Fairly or unfairly, there’s also a difference in narrative timing: when the first quarter ended, the press was trying to bury Edwards.” http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/07/romney_wore_makeup_film_at_ele.php

  • LOL! It’s called good campaign strategy! The voting masses are actually pretty ignorant, lazy AND stupid; they want to be told what to do and who to choose from. This being the case, sensationalized emotion wrenching statements are a very effective tool during an election campaign.

    Doesn’t make it “right” though.

  • wvng, of course that is correct in fact, but politicians can no more change the “law” that “perception is reality” than they can change the law of gravity.

    one skill of a candidate is saying what needs to be said without creating undue opportunities for distortion. other than the broader issue of covering the sizzle, not the steak, how was the headline “intentionally wrong”? unless i am misreading the story, the headline was nearly verbatim of a snippet of Obama’s own words. out of context, perhaps. incomplete – which headlines are by definition. but not wrong.

    all Obama had to do was say a combination of what Haik at 7 and colonpowow at 11 said: I think the problem of pediphilia is an issue worth getting teachers and potential victims, our children, involved in. We need to begin teaching children about good and bad touching at the earliest age the local community believes is appropriate.

    substantively this is the same as what he said. but it makes it much harder to turn into the problematic headline. and frankly, Obama’s joking about having been hit with this issue before was akin to Gary Hart’s telling the press “go ahead and watch me, you’ll be pretty bored.” he knew he was playing with fire and did it anyway. i like Obama but on this one i have limited sympathy if he gets burned.

    right or wrong, the way campaigns work is a short term given. having the skill to do well in that environment is part of what is tested in primaries. no one should be under any illusions that it gets easier in the general where the press has a proven preference for the Rethug candidates. i hope Obama (and the other Dems) learn. (oh, and no orange make-up at debates.)

  • Good lord – when my girls were in high school, for crying out loud, we had to give permission for them to participate in the sex-ed portion of the Health class they took. High school. And it wasn’t that long ago, either.

    With 5 year olds, there might be the occasional question, prompted by seeing something they wouldn’t have if you’d remembered to lock the door, or something said on the TV or something some older kid said that they didn’t understand. But that’s mostly what it is – random questions. There is no way to “teach” sex ed to 5-year olds, and Obama should know that – especially since he has relatively young children.

    It was a stupid thing to say – really stupid. He would have been better off saying that, as a parent, he believes in answering his children’s questions, in an age-appropriate way, and with an eye toward figuring out what they really want to know.

  • Forgot to add that the subject of inappropriate touching is one that I think would not go over well in a group setting of 5-year olds, and since one of the things parents need to convey to their children is that that kind of touching is bad, even when someone like a teacher or other trusted person does it, I think it’s better for that to be discussed at home.

  • Some kids or their parents are recent immigrants from really conservative or really ignorant parts of the world where it wouldn’t be considered appropriate to tell kids about child molestors or warn them about it, or telling kids how to protect themselves is just not done- now, notice you can’t just tell a kid not to get in a car with a stranger, because a child molestor could be someone the kid knows. Kids don’t want to be molested, but if no one tells them about it, that it’s a big no-no, and to do things to protect themselves against it, than if an older authority figure assaults a kid like this, the kid may just become confused (kids trusts authority figures and assume they do what’s right) and not report it. This leads to the kid getting victimized again and again, becoming more screwed up, other kids getting victimized, and the child molestor not being caught. It doesn’t even have to be a family from another country- it can just be some dumb-ass parents that are too irresponsible to ever teach their kids not to talk to strangers.

    In this day and age, parents have to be careful (because everyone’s sorry worried about child molestors) about talking to their kids about sex, too, because while you might just be telling them the things I described (what child molestors want to do, that it’s wrong, that a kid should say no to it and tell you about it, not to get in a car with a stranger) your dumb kid may always relate this to someone else and it may come out sounding to some dumb person or someone who doesn’t like and trust you that you were talking to your kids about inappropriate things and that you’re a child molestor. So it makes it better for everyone to make this a public function because parents don’t have to worry about saying the right thing, and the kid won’t end up not being told because the parents procrastinated- instead, the state can employ experts to find out what’s really the best thing to say to the kids about it, and what’s the best way to say it, and all the parents can know what the kids are being told.

    Probably also if the messafe is in school and given once a year for a few years, the kid is more likely to remember all the advice and use it if the abuse comes from a teacher. If the kid only hears the advice once in a non-school context like at some summer camp or church function, never thinks about it for 2 1/2 years or 3 years, and then is molested by a teacher at school, then the kid may not be as ready to handle the situation as he was taught a long time ago (the kid doesn’t connect the advice with the actual situation, the context- damned if I know how kids’ minds work, but for everybody it’s kind of like that- “how you train is how you react”); and there’s not the preventative effect against would-be molestor teachers of knowing that all the kids are taught about it every year.

  • Probably also if the messafe

    Oops, that should have read “Probably alos if the message.”

    Basically, the people who are bothering Barack Obama about this are bastards.

  • These Republicans aren’t exactly gumshoes, that’s for certain:

    “They’ll chase the clues, they’ll find the wheres, and whys, and whos.”

    ~Chip and Dale’s Rescue Rangers Theme Song

  • I admire Obama. He isn’t a lump of political plastic stuffed into a suit. Whether people agree with him or not most view him as a person first not a politician. To me there is something intensely refreshing about a candidate who answers the question he is asked. He’s bright, commonsensical, and thinks on his feat. A real gold strike considering what we’ve got now. If he hasn’t mastered what we all despise in our leaders- the jaded world weary apathy or the sound bite for every occasion, I can live voting for him anyway.

    He’s not my perfect President. I don’t agree with most of his ideas. I do agree with this one. The main reason I support Obama is because I view him as what my country and my world needs right now, an enlightened, energetic, bridge-builder worthy of respect in his own right with vision, determination, and a sense of the greater good, plus a bit of human truth and dignity tossed in for good measure. He won’t be a good President. He’ll be a great one.

  • Anne,

    I agree. Better to teach your children everything you possibly can at home. Even better when important lessons are reinforced in a school environment too. Of course, a lot of parents aren’t gifted as teachers. When such is the case. Children will at least have a chance to learn what they need to know to protect themselves from harm.

    I couldn’t imagine sending a child off to kindergarten who has no concept of private parts and inappropriate touch any more than let a child become school age without being able to read, add and subtract. I can’t imagine a lot of things. Still, they happen every day.

    Cathy

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