Call it a war of words. If it is, and they are mightier than swords, they are apt to whet the appetites of those on the left and right for some time.
It is difficult not to see the similarity between the position radio talk show host Michael Savage assumed when he recently addressed the causes of the widespread epidemic of autism hitting our nation, albeit while using hyperbole to get his point across, and the position Barack Obama assumed when he addressed the NAACP last week at its annual convention.
Both Savage and Obama emphasized the need for parents taking personal responsibility when it comes to the education and behavior of their young. They also emphasized the need for fathers to play an active role in the home and to help raise the children they helped seed.
Both Savage and Obama seem to have taken a page or two from comedian Bill Cosby’s book, “Come on People: On the Path from Victims to Victors,” that he co-authored with Alvin F. Poussaint, M.D., and released in October 2007, as well as ideas and words from Cosby’s lectures to America’s black community that he began as early as 2004.
According to the speech Obama gave on Monday, July 14, to a predominantly black audience of close to 3000, if he is elected president he will increase funding for the No Child Left Behind Act, invest in teacher training, and expand pre-kindergarten programs.
However, he warned that what he intends to do will not change things nor make a difference unless “parents are committed to becoming involved in their children’s education.” He went on to describe the importance of parents becoming involved their children’s lives at home too.
He said that parents had to learn to turn off the TV, put away the video games, attend parent-teacher conferences, and help their children with their homework. Furthermore, he said, they need to teach their “daughters to never allow images on television to tell then what they are worth” and teach their sons “to treat women with respect. They must also realize responsibility does not end at conception; that what makes them a man is not the ability to have a child but to raise one.”
Obama didn’t define “shake down”: why you don’t have to knock on your kid’s bedroom door and ask if you can come in. Obama didn’t say that parents need to look under the bed, on the floor, and up at the ceiling because the signs are there about who children are, who they hang out with, and what they are doing.
Obama didn’t advise parents to look at the Internet and study their child’s search history and to look at their kid’s MySpace profile too.
Obama didn’t say, “Don’t ask your daughter what is it that you are listening to when your own senses tell you those were curse words. Stop the music.”
Obama didn’t ask parents to ask their children what subjects they are taking in school, what homework they have, nor when are the tests coming and what their grades are.
Obama didn’t say, “Believe a child when she says someone is fondling her. Believe you need to see the teachers when you are a parent. Believe that you can make your place clean. Also believe that even if you don’t own it and it doesn’t belong to you, if you live there make it bright.”
Cosby said the above and more. Available on YouTube, the video features an interview with Cosby and Poussaint conducted by Oprah Winfrey in April 2008. To date it has had 7,356 hits.
But it is not as specific. Obama’s speech won’t serve as a primer for parents who really long for a change and hope for better lives for their children. Cosby’s could and might for some if they are given the opportunity to hear it and/or read it.
What does this have to do with a war of words? Just about everything.
As I listened Monday to various early morning radio shows and read my city paper as well, I could not overlook the criticism that Savage received in response to one of his recent shows on autism. From the way I see it, he spent more time on the epidemic and drug company profits from its treatment than anything else.
I remember I listened to the show when I was driving back from the Cape last week. Coupled with the newspaper article and the sound bites I listened to Monday morning on WRKO, I have concluded, somewhat because of what I have seen during my years spent in the classroom, much of what he says could help parents who simply want more information because they long for change and hope to shape better lives for their children who may or may not be afflicted with autism or some other learning disability.
Children are often misdiagnosed when it comes to learning disabilities and drug treatment is frequently over-prescribed. Consider the research published in the “American Journal of Public Health” that said as many as ten percent of all children in second through fifth grade have been given prescriptions of Ritalin even though many of them probably don’t have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
Health care advocates have blamed the difficulty of educating parents about proper diet as well as how they should parent their children as a contributing cause of the over-prescription of Ritalin during the last decade or so.
Granted, Savage used hyperbole to get the attention of his audience.
When he said, “In 99 percent of the cases, it’s a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out,” he was obviously wrong. But he also said some things that need to be heard. He warned of the record-breaking surge in cases and the best and worst that often accompanies the diagnosis of children with any learning disabilities.
If nothing else, Savage will get parents thinking and make them want to become better informed. As for why all the fuss and why there are threats now by some to call for Savage to be silenced and to be fired, all I can think is that it is really a battle between the right and the left.
If he were Cosby, they would react the same and have. Troubling but true.
Westwood resident Carol Ziemian teaches writing at Northeastern University. Her column appears in the Daily News Transcript on Wednesday. She can be reached at YankeePenn@aol.com.
