Roman Around

Billy Earl Dade Middle School, Dallas

His approval ratings are dropping. He has made apologizing for his country on foreign soil an art form. He has stood silent while innocents lay slaughtered by the government in the streets of Iran, yet wasted no time condemning police officers in Massachusetts. He has pushed the deficit into record-breaking territory with no end in sight. He has condemned profit making in the midst of a recession. He has voiced his steadfast support for a single-payer health care system. He has awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to an Israel-hating, terrorist supporting leftist. He’s buddied up to Hugo Chavez; condemned the legal removal of dictator-in-waiting Jose Manual Zelaya in Honduras; and is considering bringing terrorist thugs from a perfectly functioning detention facility in Cuba to the United States. Unemployment has risen consistently under his watch. His stimulus packages have been a rousing failure. He is lauded as a brilliant orator, but stumbles and stammers when his teleprompter is out sick. He has openly laughed when “comedians” have joked about the death of conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, and he has never run anything in his entire life, but is now Chief Executive of the most powerful nation on earth.

He is President Barack Obama, and he did not approve this message.

So, naturally, almost seven months into what can only be characterized (at best) as a troubled presidency (even with both houses of congress tucked away nicely in the Obamacratic fold), what could possibly make more sense than to name another school after him?

And while we’re at it, why not go ahead and rename a school after newly appointed Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor? (Did you know she was the first Latina on the high court?)

That’s exactly what’s being proposed in a South Dallas school district.

However, it hasn’t been smooth sailing.

Steve Pickett, reporting for CBS 11 in Dallas, writes:

The debate to rename two Dallas schools after President Barack Obama and newly sworn-in Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor is heating up.

Much of the focus has been on the call to add Mr. Obama’s name to a much-loved south Dallas school. DISD school board trustee Ron Price called for the change to Billy Earl Dade Learning Center to Barack Obama Middle School. However, former educators like Wilber Williams said a tribute to the President shouldn’t be made at the expense of a pillar of south Dallas’ education community.

“It’s my understanding that we have a bond program and new schools are going to be built, and I think it would be appropriate for them to consider President Obama during that time,” Williams said.

…

“Overwhelmingly, the parents and the kids said we want Barack Obama and when you see those kids eyes, their eyes just started glowing, and even the parent’s eyes were glowing just for the fact that their kid would one day go to the Barack Obama school,” Price said.

So far, there hasn’t been much debate over the selected Sotomayor school.

Glowing?

Like radioactivity?

I may need something to settle my stomach after reading that.

Please don’t misunderstand. The idea of naming a school after President Barack Obama does not, in and of itself, bring on the nausea.

My question is … what exactly has the President achieved to justify it?

Other than being the first black man elected to the office, he hasn’t yet done anything to warrant displacing the name of someone else who clearly deserved the honor. And even if the accolade involves co-naming an already existing school, or building a brand new school, the President hasn’t even been in office seven months. Can he at least do something first?

(It is a loaded question, I know).

And what if Obama’s presidency is an unmitigated, bona fide failure?

What if his time in office is disastrous?

His immortalization will be based on what?  His skin color?

It is a marvelous testament to America’s greatness that less than fifty years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law the United States elected a black man to the nation’s highest office; but at the risk of sounding callous (or dare I say it, “racist”), the “novelty” of his skin color has long since worn off. The most powerful man in the world must now be judged as all others who have occupied the Oval Office before him.

Lost in all of this is the fact that honoring him in such a way, without a track record to speak of, sends the wrong message to these “glowing” children and their equally luminous parents – namely that Barack Obama’s name was given to a school, not because of his achievements as President, but because of the melanin levels in his skin.

Not exactly what Mr. King had in mind.

-