“I know that folks were rifling through my kindergarten papers. I’m
going to be disclosing them tomorrow. It will show that I experimented
with colouring outside the lines. I was pulling on pigtails.”
— Barack Obama
The Economist brought my attention to the above quote, which it initially got from an ABC News blog. The point was to mock the way Clintonistas have been attacking him, but it raises another key issue:
Did he color (or, to do it the Economist way, "colour") outside the lines? And if so, what does that say about him?
I’m strictly orthodox on this. I was taught to stay in the lines, and I did so. This is one of the few areas of fundamental disagreements I have with my wife, who was told to let her creativity free. Personally, I found this scandalous, and have done my best just to overlook it for the sake of matrimonial harmony over the past three-plus decades. There’s just no point in my going on about the fact that she was taught wrong.
I find myself wondering whether this is any kind of indicator of our political attitudes. Do Ron Paul supporters and other libertarians tend to be outside-the-lines people? Whom are we stricter types more likely to favor, as a rule?
And does it matter? (Of course it matters! Only those outside-the-lines anarchists would think otherwise!)
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I’m a fervent Paul supporter and I color within the lines. My wife colors outside the lines, but she supports Dr. Paul for President. Dr. Paul’s message of freedom leaves room for ALL styles of coloring in the US, as long as we’re not coloring other people or forcing coloring styles by Executive fiat.
Freedom to color how you wish, and no more IRS. Vote Ron Paul!
Lines? We don’t need no stinking lines!
Cattle and lemmings stay in lines. They wound up in slaughterhouses and over cliffs.
Lines are for amusement park rides, Hollywood night club entrances, and other doses of fantasy.
Stay in the box? Nah, blow it up.
To us a paradigm is worth 20 cents.
We perfer Ralph Waldo Emmerson (“Who must so be a man must be a nonconformist”).
We prefer Henry David Thoreau’s “On Civil Disobedience.”
When two roads diverge in Robert Frost’s woods, we create a third because we have the mountain bikes.
We’re free spirits. We love our freedom.
And that’s why we support Dr. Paul.
I would say Paul supporters are somewhere in between the two extremes. We will color in the lines if presented the picture but may disagree fundamentally that you’re asking us to color a picture rather than letting us make their own and will fight to have you give us blank pieces of paper instead of coloring books.
Also, I should say that while I colored scrupulously inside the lines, I was a pigtail-puller, provided the pigtail owner was attractive. Therefore I believe the two phenomena are unrelated — at least for me. I was one to observe the forms, but not to behave myself. Actually, that pretty much describes my overall pattern in school.
Why get a bad rap from teacher over something like coloring? Build up good will over the small stuff, and maybe you can get away with the good stuff. (“Teacher, he pulled my pigtail!” “Oh no,” thinks the teacher, “not our Bradley; he colors so neatly.”) I didn’t do this as a conscious strategy; I think it was instinctive.
Voted for Bush in ’04. Mistake. Correcting it by voting for Paul.
When you color outside the lines, are you just scribbling or creating your own design? I suspect Obama was creating his own design, and/or checking alternative methodologies. At any rate, I have little use for those who decide that its their right to destroy the wood, just because they have mountain bikes, or all terrain vehicles.
It depends on what we are coloring. If it is Constitutional we will carefully color inside the border. If it goes against our Jeffersonian values then we will X it out and draw something tasteful outside the box.
The image of mountain bikes doing wheelies on “The Road Not Taken” sickens me. Frost the poet dwarfs Paul the politician. I want less government, not anarchy.
Crayoninja said it best. The attraction of Paul’s libertarian philosophy is that it allows both inside- and outside-the-lines types to coexist peacefully. Color as you see fit, as long as you are not trying to control how *I* color. Live and let live.
That said, in school I was yanking pigtails and coloring outside the lines. However, I know plenty of libertarians who are more traditional and strict.
Rather than “stay the course” and be forced to remain within confining lines, I prefer to “cut and run” and use a blank sheet of paper.
Lines? We don’t need no stinking lines!
I was taught that one must color outside the lines, else how is it possible to provide background, or contrast, or create context? But, we didn’t have kindergarten teachers. We had Jesuits, which is sort of like being raised by wolves. … as for pigtails, they were forbidden, so we pulled at other body parts. It was worth the beatings.