Obama to heckler: "Show me some courtesy"

[Julian Englis]

Source: CBS News

President Obama chided a heckler at rally on Thursday at Ohio State University, telling the man, " sir, I'm hear to speak to these folks, you can hold your own rally, you're being rude."

The crowd erupted in cheers supporting the president but the man kept shouting. He wanted to give Mr. Obama a book.

With a grin on his face, Mr. Obama said he would be happy to read the book and added, "show me some courtesy."

The president motioned to Secret Service to get the book from the man.

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57402910-503544/obama-to-heckler-show-me-some-courtesy/

---

A good job by our nation's President. The heckler was not ejected.

[MADem]

1. Damn. SMOOTH! nt

[JI7]

2. do we know what book it was ?

[Liberalynn]

3. I'm guessing it was some version of the Bible

JMHO

[Monk06]

13. More likely some WND Farah/Corsi birther bullshit. n/t

[alfredo]

33. Nancy Drew "The Mystery at Lilac Inn"

[Peregrine Took]

38. Brilliant! n/t

[alfredo]

41. It has that effect on people.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

46. Is that the one where nancy runs into

Frank and joe Hardy, and they end up having a threesome in the hotel pool?

Oops, no. That was the Hustler version.

Never mind.

[alfredo]

58. This is the one where they had their Ayn Rand fan club meeting, then stiffed the waiter.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

60. even scarier.

[alfredo]

70. Nancy Drew ended up in a loveless marriage to a carpet salesman.

After ten years he disappeared, and so did all their savings. Nancy lived for another fifteen years She was survived by 23 cats. It was a closed casket ceremony due to the cats festing on her carcass. Her headstone was misspellecd (Nancey Drew).

[Enrique]

75. damn

that's dark.

[alfredo]

77. Not as dark as what happened to Lil Lotta.

[RoccoR5955]

61. Yeah, it was "My Pet Goat."

[jpak]

4. Bush and Cheney would have arrested and tried that heckler as a terrorist

yup

[valerief]

21. Don't be ridiculous. They would have had him shot. nt

[indivisibleman]

25. no, tortured, then

tortured again, then tortured again, then shot.

[teknomanzer]

34. You're all wrong...

Heckler would have been in a "free speech zone" two miles away.

[RoccoR5955]

62. But what they do to him on the way is

Beat him up, fingerprint him, take his DNA, and picture, while they look up his name in the database.

[Hawkowl]

91. And tissue type him

For possible organ donor matches

[indivisibleman]

92. That's funny.

[OKNancy]

5. There is a video at the link

He handled it really well.

[1StrongBlackMan]

6. Nor was the heckler tased. n/t

[freshwest]

23. My first thought. Well managed by Obama.

[brooklynite]

7. The mark of a great politician is how they deal with hecklers...

Clinton and Obama will engage the heckler Nd take control of the situation. Most politicians (including Romney and Gingrich) will just throw out a lame joke to break the tension while the heckler is removed from the room. The worst politicians (like McCain) will just freeze up until the problem is resolved by someone else.

[tblue37]

55. That's also characteristic of a good standup comic. nt

[Ikonoklast]

59. A good stand-up comic lives for hecklers to interrupt their set.

I saw a guy try to heckle, and you will not believe this, but I swear to you I was the in the audience and witnessed it first-hand...Don Rickles.

That was thirty years ago, and I'll bet that guy is still smarting from the verbal thrashing that was laid upon him by Rickles.


It was epic.


The crowd was in tears.

I know I was.

[Amonester]

8. Perfect way to shut them up, and with civility.

That said, "sir, I'm hear..." (instead of HERE) On CBSnoNEWS? Really?

[TrollBuster9090]

28. Apparently every time the guy who writes the Cavuto lines at Fox gets fired...

CBS makes a point of hiring him.

*Shrug*

Either that, or they're outsourcing their video graphics to South Korea now.

[RKP5637]

9. He handled it sooo well. And with no rough stuff by security, etc.

[Warren DeMontague]

10. Off topic, but, "I'm hear to speak to these folks"???? ..CBS news needs a human editor, I think.

Sometimes spell check doesn't cut it.

[mainstreetonce]

11. He handled it better

Much better than Christie, that is for sure.

[TrollBuster9090]

29. John Mcenroe handles hecklers better than Chris Christie

So that particular bar is pretty low.

[lunatica]

47. LOL!

[CaliforniaPeggy]

12. President Obama has class! Unlike some other clowns...n/t

[freshwest]

24. +1,000

[kirby]

14. Dont acknowledge me bro! n/t

[craigmatic]

15. Say what you will about Obama but he has the balls to confornt people who disagree with him.

Unlike republicans who like to either shut people down or get them thrown out or just hold private canned rallies.

[Jamaal510]

37. ...

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="

" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

[Iliyah]

16. He didn't tell him to shut up

cause I'm the President and he didn't call him a idoit.

[steve2470]

17. He handled it perfectly ! nt

[The Doctor.]

18. He's been renditioned by now.

I'm sure.

[IndyJones]

19. You know, that's actually a pretty classy way to handle that situation. He didn't have to

be so kind. He respectfully shut it down.

[Julian Englis]

20. We can all learn from this.

As a conservative Canadian friend of mine noted about this, "Calm and assertive is not just good with dogs."

[drm604]

22. I just don't understand how anyone can dislike the guy.

Could he have any more class?

[madokie]

27. The hate is the color of his skin

plus he is a Democrat. The two makes him toxic to bigots and racist bastards

[Kelvin Mace]

30. Well....

as long as you are not on the receiving end of a predator drone, stuck in a cell in Guantanamo, being tortured by the military (Bradley Manning), or a fan of the rule of law, he's a helluva guy!

Class is relative.

I am glad he can handle hecklers though.

[Muskypundit]

35. lol

Just.... Lol...

[RBInMaine]

39. And saved us from a depression, saved the car industry, created 4 million jobs....

[Shirley0401]

52. yeah, BUT...

He's still far from perfect.
FAR.
Doesn't make him as bad as the alternative, and I'm sure I'll end up holding my nose and voting for him, but let's not rush to canonize him just yet because he can handle a heckler.
I'm always disappointed when folks on the left fall into the "our team vs their team" groupthink we're so good at recognizing and criticizing when the other "team" does it. Obama's record as the president is hardly that of a progressive. A lot of all three things you mention are due to a combination of factors, including factors way out of his control. Obama didn't "create jobs" as president any more than Mitt Romney did while he was at Bain. You're using "their" language of oversimplification.
Not that he didn't contribute, but oversimplification and easy dichotomies are part of the problem with modern politics. And you're buying in.
But, yeah. He's still way cooler than Bush. (Even if they are both pro-torture, pro-war, and pro-prohibition.) Not that W. exactly set the bar high.

[Tarheel_Dem]

56. Who called him "perfect"? "Way cooler than Bush"? Lots of talking points and putdowns in....

a single post. I hope we'll all grow up to be as smart & complex as you seem to be.

And then there's this:

Obama didn't "create jobs" as president any more than Mitt Romney did while he was at Bain.

[Kelvin Mace]

64. "Doesn't make him as bad as the alternative"

is not a very encouraging measure, as you note.

I can't vote for him, but wish him luck.

[Kelvin Mace]

63. Sorry

but while these are certainly nice things and commendable, they do not erase the very BAD things he is doing.

[xtraxritical]

43. Shu'up

[Shirley0401]

53. good one

Who's team is this guy on, anyway? Am I right?
Facts have no place in our cheering section!
(I hope you were joking. I am.)
Better than awful is hardly worth celebrating.

[Kelvin Mace]

65. Rather depressing, actually

[JNelson6563]

48. It's like he's Bush's twin!1!

[knitter4democracy]

50. Talk to teachers.

His Race to the Top is worse than No Child Left Behind. He and Sec. Duncan are destroying public schools all in the name of "saving" us and pouring millions into testing corporations' pockets.

It's not that I think he isn't a good man, just that he is seriously right-wing and wrong when it comes to education. When he talks to teachers, he lies and says his administration isn't doing what it is and either has no idea what's actually happening or is just lying.

[Shirley0401]

54. yes and no

It's hard to say either policy is better or worse than another. R2T is potentially more dangerous, though, since NCLB was setting an essentially impossible standard. (Of course, it was written so the math didn't start to make this clear until W was out of office.)
But I agree that it perpetuates the same myth that the way to spur positive change is to punish "failure."
Education in America can't be successfully addressed if we keep trying to shoehorn it into the business model and address it as such. Kids aren't the "customers." Parents aren't the "customers." Society is. And we fail ourselves when we reward successful schools for doing what they've always done and punish schools regardless of what the causes of their failures might be.
I think we're going to see an even more pronounced achievement gap in the future, as good teachers seek the security of stable schools. It might break down more along socioeconomic lines than racial ones, but it will be no less injurious to society as a whole.
I've often wondered when a former educator might make it onto politics at the national level, and actually talk some sense. Arnie Duncan has never spent a day in the trenches. He's talking (and guiding legislation) out of his ass.
But, yes. Obama can handle a heckler. Go team.

[JDPriestly]

57. Same for human rights. Just really conservative, too conservative.

He cares about his own privacy, but not that of ordinary law-abiding citizens.

[Major Hogwash]

66. Hahaha!!!!!!

Worse than, huh? Sure, sure.

[joshcryer]

73. RTT is voluntary. NCLB is not.

RTT has led to score inflation, but otherwise is a good idea. Give grants to districts that can raise their eduction levels. It's just applied wrong.

[knitter4democracy]

74. Education levels as determined by what?

Testing, testing, and more testing. That's great for testing companies but terrible for students. Our students are so tested out these days that it's crazy. In order to prepare them for the high-stakes tests, we give them untold numbers of practice tests and practice problems and more--almost all of which cost money that goes right into the testing corporations' pockets.

As for being voluntary, with tax numbers going down, states are desperate for the funds attached to RTT. Once a state starts going for it, it's not voluntary for the districts. RTT says that student test scores have to be used in evaluating teachers, and so all the states that have opted in now require it, even when the data shows that it's not an effective measurement of teacher effectiveness or a motivator for teacher efficacy. RTT is based on bad data and even worse theory, and now it's the norm everywhere.

It's a terrible idea, and it's being applied exactly the way it was designed to be.

[joshcryer]

78. Government grants are never a bad idea, yes, the application can use some work.

Lots of testing isn't the answer, homework analysis, for example, could be used.

I can't believe that anyone could be against the government giving more money to schools for better learning progress. Only those who are against learning would be against that.

[knitter4democracy]

79. It's how to measure learning progress that's the issue.

Btw, latest studies show the homework doesn't raise test scores, so more and more schools aren't requiring it. The school I teach in instituted a new policy this last fall that classwork and homework cannot add up to more than 1% of a quarter grade, so now the kids refuse to do any.

The law is very clear that test scores have to be used to evaluate teachers. Any grade we give is considered biased, so the standardized test scores are all we're allowed to use. If you saw the tests and had to teach them like I do, you'd understand why I'm against them. Cultural and racial bias are still highly prevalent, the writing tests are scored too quickly and only reward crappy and formulaic writing, and the tests only test one or two kinds of intelligences and not any of the rest.

[joshcryer]

80. Yeah, I'm saying throw out the test scores.

Have some other metric that shows that the students are being taught, and then give them money for doing so.

[knitter4democracy]

82. That's not how the law's written, though.

The law clearly says standardized testing is what can be used, so that's what we use. Seriously, RTT is designed for the testing companies, not for the students.

[senseandsensibility]

83. Thanks for slogging it through in this back and forth discussion.

You showed a lot of patience and although joshcryer did not acknowledge it, you were right. The issue is not the way we all wish it were. The issue is the law that is being pushed by this administration that MANDATES testing as the means for showing "progress." There is no flexibility. Other DUers reading this exchange will agree with you. You explained it perfectly.

[knitter4democracy]

84. Thank you. We can only follow the law as it's written.

It's clearly written to push testing, and that's what we do.

For example, in Michigan, the high-stakes test for all juniors in high school is the ACT. In Alabama, it's an Alabama test that's nowhere near as difficult. In Ohio, it's the 9th grade proficiency. The law doesn't say what the test has to be, and it depends on each state choosing the tests.

For us here in Michigan, it means that all students must score "proficient" on the ACT, a test that was never designed (and still isn't) to measure anything like that. Of course, we're never told what number that is, so it's a gamble every year to see if our students do well on the test or not. The ACT only measures math, critical reading skills, English (mostly grammar and writing for clarity), science reasoning, and persuasive essay writing. That's it. Everything else in the curriculum isn't important. So, Michigan added another day of testing that has yet another math test, a rigorous science test, and a social studies test. Still, foreign language (required by the state for high school graduates), music, art, and so much else of the curriculum don't get tested. RTT doesn't care, though, and says that all teachers must be evaluated based on their students' test scores, so at my school, everyone else has the reading score to deal with, even if they don't teach reading (like in phys. ed.).

The entire thinking is wrong. Progress isn't measured by one day or three days of testing or even monthly testing. We've seen wild swings in kids' test scores even month to month, so there are obviously other factors in play. Portfolio assessments are the most accurate but take the most time/manpower and cost the least, so those are right out.

[joshcryer]

86. Where have I in any way disagreed with the poster?

I said it was a good idea, not that the law itself was good. People are so sensitive.

I maintain that I like the idea of a grant program for schools that improve learning.

[knitter4democracy]

88. I maintain that's not a good idea.

It's not easy to measure in all reality. What do you do to schools that don't improve (like in NCLB where you have to make progress every year even if you get to 100% and have no more progress to make)? If we use homework, like you suggested, then what do you do about cheating (a real epidemic nation-wide) or grade inflation?

I think schools with over 40% free/reduced lunch should get government grants to help pay for more teachers. All those grants for more coaches or administrators aren't helping reduce class sizes, and all those technology grants don't help if we don't have enough teachers to deal with the technology and students. There aren't many grants out there to help pay for teachers.

[joshcryer]

89. The school districts can use the grant money to hire more teachers.

If they find that lack of teachers are the core issue and not the teaching style, then they can get more teachers. It's hard to cheat at homework if that homework is actually done in the classroom as opposed to sending kids home where they can pop open WolframAlpha and find the solutions to most of their homework. Of course, we had a topic here about "flipping" which did not go over so well, so I expect to be summarily dismissed, despite that all the arguments against are an indictment on students. "Cheating is a real epidemic nation-wide!"

[knitter4democracy]

90. Homework done in the classroom is called classwork.

Just sayin'.

It seems like you're really reaching here. The system you say we should use is exactly what we did use only to be told by the Powers That Be that it wasn't accurate or real and therefore had to be replaced by standardized tests.

The grant money, from everything I've seen, cannot be used to pay for very many teachers, if any, and districts get more bang for their buck if they use it for supplies or technology, etc. Remember, 80% of the average school district's budget (and often more) goes toward staff pay and benefits. If you need to cut anywhere, that's the only realistic place to cut.

[joshcryer]

85. I don't think I ever indicated that it was?

I said it was poorly done.

[knitter4democracy]

87. Still, the law is what it is.

It's silly to sit around saying that the law's based on a good premise (faulty premise, actually) but just being implemented incorrectly or was written wrongly and should be modified. The law is what it is, and we're paying for that now.

[Skittles]

68. see that's what makes the racism so clear

the man is very likeable - nice, down to earth - there's nothing outrageous about him

[joshcryer]

72. He gets shit done. People hate those who get shit done.

Getting shit done is bad. Talk is more important than action.

[DWinNJ]

26. Difference between Bush and Obama

Do you think Bush would offer to read a book?

[TrollBuster9090]

31. Sir, you can gimme yer shoes, I'll wear 'em later. Just lemme talk to these folks...nt

[Gore1FL]

32. He still hasn't read the August 6th 2001 PDB...

[thecrow]

42. Bush.....? Read......?

Oh yeah I remember one time he spent 7 minutes with "My Pet Goat"...
That was special.

[Blue Owl]

36. Whereas Bu$h to heckler: "Show me your loyalty oath"

n/t

[JaneQPublic]

40. CBS grammar error

"i'm hear to" should be "I'm here to."

[Glimmer of Hope]

69. It is still there.

[BootinUp]

44. So the heckler was nicely introduced to the Secret Service?

bwahahahahahaahhaaaha.

[jimlup]

45. This marks the difference between a democratic administration and the repukes... /nt

[Lasher]

49. Bush locked potential dissenters up in cages called 'free speech zones'

I'm not advocating that but Obama's going to have to come up with something more. Remember how the teabaggers took over the town hall meetings? We did nothing to counter their disruption and the brownshirts won.

Like Obama says, hold your own rally. This disruptor should have been ejected.

[Honeycombe8]

51. Great response. That's what I think of hecklers, even when I like the position of them.

Hecklers, no matter what they're protesting or trying to say, are interfering with other people's right to hear the speaker they came to hear. They're hijacking a forum.

I don't like it, no matter what. One person's rights end where another's begins.

[BlueIris]

67. I watched Bill Clinton deal with a heckler the same way in '08.

Minus the Secret Service part. Our audience was telling the heckler to STFU, too.

Good for Obama. Who goes to a speech by the president to heckle? That's juvenile.

[joshcryer]

71. That's Obama.

[Enrique]

76. do we know yet what the book was?

maybe Obama's reading it now.

[BiggJawn]

81. Was it a copy of "Atlas Shrugged"? n/t