Why I Hate The Starfish Story

Of all the things I posted yesterday, I never would have guessed that my complaint about President Obama's use of the story about the little boy and the starfish on the beach would have attracted so many comments! But given that it has, I want to explain in more detail why it annoyed me so much.

In his speech kicking off a major call to public service by Americans, President Obama, who has something of a reputation as an orator, turned to an absurdly hackneyed story that everyone in America must have heard at some point. Instead of making the case for public service in a new and creative way, he and his speechwriters got lazy, and chose language that everyone's heard before. The starfish story doesn't articulate how public service benefits communities. It doesn't explain how volunteerism can help people figure out what they want to do. It doesn't address the specific needs of Americans today. Instead, it's a recycled, unattributed version of a 1969 essay by the American educator and writer Loren Eiseley that's been worn into pablum by motivational speakers for forty years. It's lazy, and that's why President Obama's use of the story annoyed me so much.

It also really annoys me that President Obama can't find it in himself to promote federal employment as a way to do good, either. I recognize that speaking to the limits of government has appeal to conservatives, and that to some extent, it's true. It doesn't make sense to have government programs to assign reading buddies to every kindergartner, or to take oral histories from every American over 60, or whatever. But this is a time when the federal government does need smart, talented employees to perform very specific tasks where they can do a great deal of good. A worker with financial oversight skills who decides to take a job at a securities firm and read to first-graders one day a week might be able to do a lot more good for the public taking a job in bailout oversight. Government isn't the answer to everything, but neither is volunteerism. Obama's done an okay job articulating the first half of the equation. He needs to do a vastly better job at the second.