Kids These Days:

If there are any readers who doubt the decision by the Newport-Mesa Unified School District to delay the school speech by President Obama, one review of the recent hysterical comments in the Daily Pilot should convince them that the district did exactly the right thing.

First, let’s set the record straight on a few items:

1) The district did not censor Obama’s speech, it simply postponed it, leaving it up to each school principal to determine when it should be shown.

2) Students will not be forced to watch the speech. Parents who do not want their children to hear the speech may have them removed for that time.

3) Students may watch the speech, alone, courtesy of the White House website. Parents may watch the speech alone as well, or parents and students may watch the speech together. In other words, the district is not necessary for the viewing of the speech.

The absurd part of this controversy is the belief that the speech was going to advance Obama’s “agenda,” whatever that agenda may be. This notion was raised even before copies of the speech were issued.

Well, let me state that if staying in school, respecting parents and teachers and working hard is his agenda, then kids should be forced to watch the speech.

That’s what the talk was all about. Not only was the content good, it was delivered in earnest. I write that as someone who did not vote for Obama and who believes that his larger plan for this country is dangerous.

Expanding on what I wrote last week, I’d bet that most of the parents who objected to the prospect of their kids being forced to watch the speech are the same ones who allow them to spend hours a week playing video games or watching the garbage that makes up almost all content on television.

The district said technical issues prevented the speech from being aired to students on the first day of school, which caused some raised eyebrows in the area.

I’ll take the district at its word, but even if that were not true, the first day of school was a bad time even for a good speech. On that day, at least one high school had major schedule revisions for many students, which resulted in some low-level confusion.

Plus, as any active teacher will tell you, the first day of school is one of the most important of the year. It is a day of first impressions and a day in which teachers assert their authority, putting the stake in the ground for classroom behavior for the rest of the semester.

It is not a day for distractions. Yes, the speech that day would have been a distraction.

Further, Obama’s speech was available online the day before, so it’s not as if postponing the speech would have prevented kids from ever seeing it. You can’t censor something that is available through any computer.

Both sides of this non-issue are behaving according to plan, reinforcing my belief that the single biggest reason we have an impotent state Legislature and why Congress is debating the same big issues it was discussing 20 years ago is because both the left and the right thrive on polarization at the unfortunate expense of those who voted them into office.

So, faced with a no-win situation, the district punted. And what a beauty it was — a high spiral that landed on the one-yard line and bounced out of bounds.

STEVE SMITH is a Costa Mesa resident and a freelance writer. Send story ideas to dailypilot@latimes.com .