Obama Lays it on the Line to the NAACP

Obama gave what the Times describes as a "fiery" speech last night to the NAACP where he apparently pulled no punches:

I'm working everyday for you - fighting it out to get you free health care, free education and guaranteed spots in colleges, keeping the cops off your back by cracking down on profiling, more subsidized housing, lots of government jobs, and my man Eric [Holder, U.S. Attorney General], you know he'll have his eyes focused on any Title VII violations, whatever shenanigans the Court pulled with those firemen.

But you've got to work with me - you can't make my job harder than it is already. So would it kill you to have the kids turn off the XBox once in a while? Maybe do a little more studying? Do our role models always have to LeBron or Lil' Wayne? I can get you those cool jobs - engineers, scientists, Supreme Court justice - you name it - but you gotta work with me a little. Actually, all you have to do is talk about doing it - at least just promise me that, you'll at least talk about "personal responsibility." Trust me, that's all it takes

Ok, so that might not be quite how the Times covered it (nor a verbatim transcript of Obama's speech), but you get good at reading between the lines of Times articles after awhile, which is the only way to figure out what's actually going on. I mean, how many of these "personal responsibility" speeches are we going to hear about, and how long are we going to be told it's some new development that's really going to make a difference? The Times reporter may not have heard the speech for what it was, but I'm pretty sure the assembled gathering understood completely.