Posted on 03/02/2008 11:16:58 AM PST by grundle
Crowd cheers advice to turn off TV, skip Popeyes for breakfast
FORT WORTH, Texas -- On the campaign trail, Democratic front-runner Sen. Barack Obama talks about how he would use the bully pulpit if president, and he offered a demonstration Thursday when he drew wild cheers as he told a mostly African-American crowd that parents need to shape up, turn off the TV, help their kids with their homework and stop letting them grow fat eating Popeyes chicken for breakfast.
"It's not good enough for you to say to your child, 'Do good in school,' and then when that child comes home, you got the TV set on, you got the radio on, you don't check their homework, there is not a book in the house, you've got the video game playing," said Obama while in Beaumont, in southeast Texas.
"So turn off the TV set, put the video game away. Buy a little desk or put that child by the kitchen table. Watch them do their homework. If they don't know how to do it, give them help. If you don't know how to do it, call the teacher. Make them go to bed at a reasonable time. Keep them off the streets. Give ' em some breakfast. Come on. ... You know I am right."
Can change happen with words? That's a core question being raised about the Obama candidacy.
"I've got to talk about us a little bit," said Obama. "We can't keep on feeding our children junk all day long, giving them no exercise. They are overweight by the time they are 4 or 5 years old, and then we are surprised when they get sick."
Obama -- who exercises and is careful about what he eats -- said obese children need to improve their nutrition habits, invoking the name of a chain that makes delicious fried chicken.
"I know how hard it is to get kids to eat properly," Obama said. "But I also know that if folks letting our children drink eight sodas a day, which some parents do, or, you know, eat a bag of potato chips for lunch, or Popeyes for breakfast.
"Y'all have Popeyes out in Beaumont? I know some of y'all you got that cold Popeyes out for breakfast. I know. That's why y'all laughing. ... You can't do that. Children have to have proper nutrition. That affects also how they study, how they learn in school."
Obama has delivered "tough love'' messages before about personal responsibility, but he seemed to revel in his "truth-telling" while campaigning in Beaumont, on a day that also took him to Austin and Fort Worth in advance of Tuesday's crucial primaries.
As Obama stumped in the Lone Star State to Texas-size crowds -- he packed in 13,000 people at the convention center here Thursday night -- his campaign was downplaying any presumption that he will emerge in a few days as the all-but-certain Democratic nominee.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton "is working tirelessly, as is Bill Clinton, in both Ohio and Texas; these races are extraordinarily tight," Obama said during a press conference on his plane en route to Beaumont. The Obama team was shocked to lose the New Hampshire primary in January, and since then, Obama has curbed the bravado that bubbled up in the Granite State.
Obama resisted an invitation by a reporter to write the Clinton campaign obituary. Said Obama, "Remember New Hampshire?"
Two of my favorite saying...
A broken clock is right twice a day.
Even a blind squirrel will find a nut occasionally.
I would never vote for him either, but I love to hear it.
Cosby is not Hafrican, that is why.
Gee! No one is worried about Popeyes stock!
And the irony of Le Roi Jones is that he MARRIED a white woman!Maybe its all about a deep love-hate neurosis he has with white people.
Sad thing is that the culture of the hood is taking hold among Asians and Latinos as well.Many act,talk and front like black ghetto cartoon characters.
The only way he could be the most libertarian president is just due to timing. Bill Clinton was a lassie fair president, not out of conviction, but because he ended up electing a Republican congress and spent so much time covering up his scandals he couldn't push a left wing agenda onto the country.
In Obama's case, he would be caught between the aging boomers and their social security requirements, and the current economic problems. The next president will not have much opportunity to add massive new programs, even if they campaign on them.
Obama's right about this... and yeah, we know it.
"Heyyy Heyyy Heyyy...
It's OOOOO-bama!"
Seriously - the black community responds to Cosby with contempt when he makes those comments. Think Barack will be treated in a similar fashion?
You hit it!The anomosity most blacks have to whites is NOTHING compared to the anger they have toward each other.
Those of us in the inner city trenches see it every day.The hatred and degredation both verbal and physical.It borders on pathology.Like a girl in my class from Desire Project in New Orleans told me back in 1973,”Mr Riverman,those n——— talk that Black is Beautiful s-—,but they don’t mean a word of it”
True that,Laverne!
Maybe they should take up smoking like Obama to control their weight.
I’m white and I say it all the time to black kids and adults.
White people today are so scaredy cat its pathetic.Be a truth teller.You will get respect.I refuse to be one of these squirmy liberals who holds my tongue around those”poor Negroes”.
I told a class the other day,”Y’all are killing yourselves eating all that garbage.Ever try eating a fresh salad?Thats REAL soul food,baby”
They look at me crazy.But no one ver tries to”string me up”
““Y’all” and “got”??? “ I believe that’s referred to as pandering.
He QUIT smoking last week.
Or so he claimed!
Encomiums to family life and personal reponsibility, which proved to be a beard.
Or rather, Confiscate Civilian Weapons!
I heard he quits every night before he goes to bed.
Doesn’t Obama care about white children?
No. It doesn’t fit into his “black value system.”
Wow. You have turned my pathetic, frightened, lying no-respect life right around.
It was just an observation there, zippy.
It a WHITE man said that blacks needed to quit feeding their children fired chicken for breakfast, he’d get killed by the media. But their hypocrisy is nothing new. It surprises me to see that some here don’t see the glaring double standard.
Wow eating popeyes chicken, I remember when the owner of the Falcons said something like that about the skid vick. The media was up in arms, I guess the media will attack hussein for this(sarcasm)
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