Scouting can be very valuable, but we need to stop worshiping the 1950's.
Scouting can be very valuable, but we need to stop worshiping the 1950's.
It's not clear in the article, so here's the actual text of the guidance issued before the speech by BSA. Basically, make sure your scouts and their families don't turn this into a political rally, and use this as a teaching moment about respecting your fellow Scouts:
As a unit leader or staff member, you can help make the president’s visit a success by ensuring that any reactions to the president’s address are, as we state in our Scout Law, friendly, courteous, and kind. This includes understanding that chants of certain phrases heard during the campaign (e.g. “build the wall,” “lock her up”) are considered divisive by many members of our audience, and may cause unnecessary friction between individuals and units. Please help us ensure that all Scouts can enjoy this historical address by making sure that your troop members are respectful not only of the president, but of the wide variety of viewpoints held by Scouts and Scouters in the audience tonight.
I couldn't find a direct link to BSA statements, but this seems consistently to be what has been quoted as their official response to the speech (it's in the second link):
The Boy Scouts of America is wholly non-partisan and does not promote any one position, product, service, political candidate or philosophy,” the group said in a statement Monday night, according to news reports. “The invitation to visit the National Jamboree is a long-standing tradition and is in no way an endorsement of any political party or specific policies.
I regret to say, but I think they are going to have to come up with something a little stronger than that. And they should.
Meanwhile, among the many lies and fabrications and inexplicable rambling, I am concerned that there was reportedly a shouted response from the crowd that no, President Obama never came to a Jamboree. To be precise, he did not physically attend one; he did address one by video link. Also, Obama was reportedly an actual Boy Scout. Trump was not. Yet there are, unsurprisingly, enough people that are ready to rewrite a history to suit a convenient narrative. Why, when I read that, do I hear a subtext of anti-African American and erasure of that uppity so and so and Trump's birtherism?
Yeah. The BSA is definitely going to have to do more than say that wasn't us.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40715185
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/25/boy-scouts-of-america-trump-speech-national-jamboree-240929
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40715185
It's not clear in the article, so here's the actual text of the guidance issued before the speech by BSA. Basically, make sure your scouts and their families don't turn this into a political rally, and use this as a teaching moment about respecting your fellow Scouts:
As a unit leader or staff member, you can help make the president’s visit a success by ensuring that any reactions to the president’s address are, as we state in our Scout Law, friendly, courteous, and kind. This includes understanding that chants of certain phrases heard during the campaign (e.g. “build the wall,” “lock her up”) are considered divisive by many members of our audience, and may cause unnecessary friction between individuals and units. Please help us ensure that all Scouts can enjoy this historical address by making sure that your troop members are respectful not only of the president, but of the wide variety of viewpoints held by Scouts and Scouters in the audience tonight.
I couldn't find a direct link to BSA statements, but this seems consistently to be what has been quoted as their official response to the speech (it's in the second link):
The Boy Scouts of America is wholly non-partisan and does not promote any one position, product, service, political candidate or philosophy,” the group said in a statement Monday night, according to news reports. “The invitation to visit the National Jamboree is a long-standing tradition and is in no way an endorsement of any political party or specific policies.
I regret to say, but I think they are going to have to come up with something a little stronger than that. And they should.
Meanwhile, among the many lies and fabrications and inexplicable rambling, I am concerned that there was reportedly a shouted response from the crowd that no, President Obama never came to a Jamboree. To be precise, he did not physically attend one; he did address one by video link. Also, Obama was reportedly an actual Boy Scout. Trump was not. Yet there are, unsurprisingly, enough people that are ready to rewrite a history to suit a convenient narrative. Why, when I read that, do I hear a subtext of anti-African American and erasure of that uppity so and so and Trump's birtherism?
Yeah. The BSA is definitely going to have to do more than say that wasn't us.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40715185
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/07/25/boy-scouts-of-america-trump-speech-national-jamboree-240929
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40715185
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