this is NOT ABOUT YOU!

There's a sequence in the Pixar movie "The Incredibles" where Bob and Helen are arguing about whether or not Dash should be allowed to go out for sports in the middle of their disagreement about Bob wanting to relive the glory days of being Mr. Incredible. Helen shouts at Bob, "This is NOT - ABOUT - YOU!" My 3-year-old has picked up this line and whenever she gets mad at me for something, she gets in my face and shouts, "This is NOT ABOUT YOU!" (She's not allowed to watch "The Incredibles" for awhile because of this.)

I'd really like to shout that at President Obama. This - governing and leading the United States - is NOT ABOUT YOU! But a number of things that have surfaced just in the past couple of days are certainly starting to look like Obama is the ME ME ME President. For example:

1. The "I pledge to be a servant of Barack Obama" video clip in my last post.

2. President Obama is scheduled next week (Tuesday the 8th) to do a televised address for students, and all K-12 schools are presumably expected to watch it. Lesson plans have been sent out in advance with activities including this:

Write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president. These would be collected and redistributed at an appropriate later date by the teacher to make students accountable for their goals.

A second version is now out there with "help the president" removed and "achieve short-term and long-term education goals" in its place. That's all well and good, but why was "help the president" ever ever ever even considered in the first place? That's some audacity of hope there, Mr. Obama.

3. The National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) and the White House Deputy Director for Public Engagement recently held a conference call with a number of members of the arts community (directors, producers, etc) "to help lay a new foundation for growth, focusing on core areas of the recovery agenda – health care, energy and environment, safety and security, education, community renewal."

Now, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the NEA as a federal agency is not allowed to participate in political activities - that's just flat out illegal. The NEA is about the arts. Why on earth would the NEA be getting into health care (that's for HHS), energy (DoE), the environment (EPA), security (the Pentagon) ... you get the idea ...

It's apparent that they know exactly what they're doing, and they know it's illegal, since their phone call was wrapped up thus: "What that looks like legally?…bear with us as we learn the language so that we can speak to each other safely…" Is this another move by Obama to get more ME ME ME glorification and attention? The fact that a pretty high muckety-muck from the White House staff (Deputy Director is no small fish) was one of the call leaders gives me a big fat Yes.

4. There are a few more things reviewed by a friend on his own blog - high school students in Massachusetts had Obama's "Dreams from my Father" on their required summer reading list, and someone "forgot" to spread the word that the students could read any memoir. And the Obama election logo is still everywhere. It's on one website's home page 40 - F-O-R-T-Y - times.

Hey, Mr. President: Governing the United States - helping our economy, creating a good job market, whatever results we have from attempts at fixing health care, defending our country and people against terrorism, figuring out how to get our soldiers out of Iraq and Afghanistan when they finish the job there, heck - figuring out what they're doing there in the first place, the education system, home foreclosures, student loans, the banking system, whatever -

THIS IS NOT ABOUT YOU
This is not the United States of Barack Obama.
Get over yourself.