McLean, VA- How Conservative Is It?

[Anonymous]

Probably choose not to show it because it was political in nature-my friend.a teacher saw the first go round and refused to show it --the watered down version was not what he intended and many teachers stood up and said..nope we saw what your intention was and we are not going for it--FYI my teacher friend is a democrat but she believes politics have no place in school!! you gotta watch Obama..he is sneaky.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Probably choose not to show it because it was political in nature-my friend.a teacher saw the first go round and refused to show it --the watered down version was not what he intended and many teachers stood up and said..nope we saw what your intention was and we are not going for it--FYI my teacher friend is a democrat but she believes politics have no place in school!! you gotta watch Obama..he is sneaky.

Isn't this the speech? I watched all 19 minutes of the video and I couldn't find the political stuff. Can someone enlighten me?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In Virginia you do NOT register as a member of ANY political party--you only have to register to vote.

Does that mean you can vote in either primary?

Yes

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One of the Mclean McMansion selfish rich here..Yup I am a conservative since I worked for it, I earned it and I would like to not just give it away. Sorry. We need more conservatives in Mclean since I am yawn getting tired of the limo liberals infecting the area.

Thank you for reinforcing my point.

- Rash Generalizer

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I live in a part of McLean where the average house price is about $900,000. I would say that in this area, political leanings are evenly divided (at least for the 2009 presidential race).

Aside from that, I don't really talk politics with my neighbors -- politics and religion are off-limits in my book. People are generally friendly here and it's a nice neighborhood. My only complaint was that the elementary school chose not to show Obama's education address to the students.

I live in Mclean (800-900K house neighborhood) and I can't remember the last time I talked about politics with any of my neighbors. But just observing stickers/signs/etc. I always thoughtit was pretty even.

Also, some elementary schools showed it and some didn't. It was up to the principal.

[Anonymous]

1012-he changed his address after uproar from teachers..although many are dems..they felt it went too far. As I said..my friend..a teacher saw what was going to be said and was one of the many thousand teachers who stood up and said..I don't think so..schools should not be seen as a place to breed influence political opinion..even at a young age.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:1012-he changed his address after uproar from teachers..although many are dems..they felt it went too far. As I said..my friend..a teacher saw what was going to be said and was one of the many thousand teachers who stood up and said..I don't think so..schools should not be seen as a place to breed influence political opinion..even at a young age.

10:12 here. Thanks for the response. I looked at some articles and it looks to me as though there was objection before the fact to the idea of Obama giving an address to students. The change that you speak of, unless there is more going on than I was able to find, was to a proposed lesson plan to accompany the speech. According to the Fox News website (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/03/parents-choose-allow-kids-hear-obamas-national-address/),

But critics objected to the language of one of the lesson plans, for students in pre-kindergarten through grade 6, which suggested that students "write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president." Another assignment for students after hearing the speech was to discuss what "the president wants us to do."

The suggestion about writing letters has since been changed to: "Write letters to themselves about how they can achieve their short-term and long-term education goals. These would be collected and redistributed at an appropriate later date by the teacher to make students accountable to their goals."

I admit that I am a liberal and am probably biased, but I think that although the wording was not smart, given the partisanship of our present political scene, it was just a rhetorical device to connect the kids to the guy they were going to see. Your description makes it sound like there was a text of the actual speech available in advance that contained Democratic propaganda, which was changed. Is that the case, or were you referring to the lesson plan? If the latter, then I retain my impression that Republicans made the assumption that Obama, doing exactly what other presidents had done before him, was automatically "political", and they used a trivial turn of phrase to to "prove" their point.

[Anonymous]

We live in McLean and are dreaded "conservatives" and during elections we constantly have our liberal neighbors knocking on our door asking us to vote for dems, so you'll fit right in.

I have to say, I love how tolerant liberals are to opposing viewpoints.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, OP, you're right, we need to get rid of all the conservatives maybe send them back to Poland or Germany, oh wait - I'm channeling liberal icon Helen Thomas.

Why don't you calm down, slap a "Celebrate Diversity" or "Co-exist" bumper-sticker on your car, and tell your children that there may be people who disagree with mommy and daddy's political philosophy, but that doesn't make them bad people - or do you only respect the opinions of those that you already agree with in a narrow spectrum?

If you replaced the world "conservative" with minority, gay, Jewish, etc. and asked "How [X] is McLean? Do they have a lot of [X's] living there?" you'd see how ridiculous and intolerant your original post was.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No surprise, I know about a number of neighborhoods in McLean and they include very conservative people, very liberal people, and a lot of people in between. Terry MacAuliffe lives there. So does Dick Cheney. Sometimes (oh my!) people of different political persuasions even live in the same household. I suspect you would do better worrying about whether the house you like is near bad traffic, the path of the 495 extension, registered child molestors, and the like.

And that will continue to mystify me. How can people with such different values be married to each other? How to raise the kids?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And that will continue to mystify me. How can people with such different values be married to each other? How to raise the kids?

There is no reason why a humane and ethical atheist liberal who believes the government should provide a safety net for the poorest citizens should not be married to a faithful believer who thinks charity should be private and government small. Or for that matter, a loudmouthed lefty like Carville and an equally assertive righty like Matalin, both of whom are probably more interested in the battle than in the values.

I suppose you raise the kids to understand that there can be different opinions held by good people, and it is up to them to decide what they believe. The kids will make that decision anyway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, OP, you're right, we need to get rid of all the conservatives maybe send them back to Poland or Germany, oh wait - I'm channeling liberal icon Helen Thomas.

Why don't you calm down, slap a "Celebrate Diversity" or "Co-exist" bumper-sticker on your car, and tell your children that there may be people who disagree with mommy and daddy's political philosophy, but that doesn't make them bad people - or do you only respect the opinions of those that you already agree with in a narrow spectrum?

If you replaced the world "conservative" with minority, gay, Jewish, etc. and asked "How [X] is McLean? Do they have a lot of [X's] living there?" you'd see how ridiculous and intolerant your original post was.

Liberal icon? Most people don't know she exists. And those who do look at her entire role in the press corps as ceremonial. She always gets called on to deliver one question that is pretty much the same question any of a dozen other reporters will ask in her absence.