Obama, Clinton woo Hoosiers
DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY | Obama urges parents to limit children's video game time
INDIANAPOLIS — The violent video game “Grand Theft Auto” is raising our kids because parents are not spending the time they need parenting, White House hopeful Barack Obama said Wednesday as he tried to move the campaign conversation away from the bombastic words of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
“These video games are raising our kids,” he said. “Middle class, upper class, working class kids, they’re spending a huge amount of time not on their studies but on entertainment.”
(AP)
While rival primary Hillary Clinton tried to make an issue of her proposed gas tax holiday elsewhere in the state, Obama chose a gentle setting in a park with flowering trees and chirping birds to have a conversation with 40 hand-picked families. But even here, he could not escape the Wright issue.
“Tell us how much a toll this takes on you to be forced by attacks — sometimes unfair attacks — to have to have to turn your back on people who have been good to you in the past?” Marc Bilodeau, 53, a college economics professor asked him.
“The situation with Reverend Wright is difficult, I won’t lie to you,” Obama said. “We want to make sure this doesn’t become a permanent distraction.”
Obama made his most drastic denouncement of Wright and his racially-charged remarks ever on Tuesday and hoped he had put the issue behind him.
Obama and his aides say the American people care more about other issues such as the high price of gas -- a point Clinton hammered as she spent time at a gas station.
Clinton told a talk radio show Wednesday morning how happy she was to be able to ride with a motorist to get gas.
“I have Secret Service protection, and I rarely even get to sit in the front seat. The best part of what I am doing right now is I am sitting in the front seat. You can’t imagine what that feels like ... I’m shotgun!”
Clinton wants a gas-tax holiday for the summer. Obama said gas companies might not pass those 18-cents-a-gallon savings on to customers, and he prefers a windfall profits tax on the gas companies. Clinton supports that too.
Polls show next Tuesday’s primary election in Indiana exceedingly close. Both sides are deploying spouses and surrogates throughout the state. Former President Bill Clinton will stump for Hillary, and Michelle Obama spoke nearly as much as her husband at Wednesday’s event.
“Let’s not elect somebody who has been there and hasn’t done it,” Michelle Obama said in a fairly clear reference to Clinton. She said education was the issue that most concerns parents and her husband is the only one who can make changes there.
“It’s going to take us being, as a nation, deeply passionate and angry about the failing education for all kids,” she said. “When was the last time we heard some really solid questions for these candidates on education in a debate? You know all about the issues in our personal lives, but ... education is the thing we should be angry about.”
That reminded Barack Obama about this morning’s news that the latest version of Grand Theft Auto, which hits the shelves Tuesday, is supposed to sell 5 million copies.
“I was just catching the news this morning about Grand Theft Auto, this video game which is going to break all records and make goo-gobs of money for whoever designed it,” he said. “This isn't intended for kids, I understand, although I promise you there will be kids who will be playing it.”
Obama marveled how his wife could juggle a career and still work with their two daughters on homework.
“It’s not easy, and we don’t make it easy for families to do it,” he said.
Obama also reacted to footage of awful conditions for returning servicemen at Ft. Bragg.
“The father went there to visit his son and started taking pictures of bathrooms that were stopped up and not working and the plumbing was all messed up. It was similar to the stories we saw about Walter Reed,” Obama said. “That’s just not acceptable that people who are putting their lives on the line for us are not being given decent facilities. I sit on the Veterans Affairs Committee, and I can tell you, Bush, the administration, keeps on short-changing V.A. [Veterans Administration] costs because they don’t want everybody to know how much this war is going to end up costing, then they come piece-meal after the fact and try to patch things together after there’s a scandal.”