CSotD: To POTUS, With Love
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I like Jim Morin's take on the Obama speech in Tucson, not only because I agree with it, but because it leaves a great deal to be discussed, largely based on the president's facial expression.
I looked on YouTube for a clip from "To Sir With Love," hoping to find something from early in the film, when Braithwaite walks into the uncivilized chaos of the classroom and begins his process of taking control by insisting that the students refer to him as "Sir" and that they address each other with similar respect. Either that or a clip from his conversations in the teachers' lounge, where the burned-out faculty assure him that he's wasting his time and that these nasty little hellions aren't worth the effort.
Couldn't find either, but — Sidney Poitier-style presence aside — that feels like the parallel: The civilized, thoughtful person who finds himself both appalled by the horrors around him and unsupported by those who, theoretically, should be his allies.
In the movie, the question is whether "Sir" will accept another, less thankless, job as an engineer or return to teaching. For Obama, it's a little different, since, if he does return in 2012, he'll be able to continue to work with the same class, rather than starting over with a new set of unkempt barbarians.
It's also a little different in that we never meet the teacher who "Sir" replaced, the one who was driven from the classroom by the little thugs. In this version, we find him building houses for the poor and monitoring elections around the world, apparently no worse for having missed out on spending four more lonely years being the only adult in the room, and, for the most part, undisturbed by being largely remembered for his failure to gain that second term.
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