It's important to remember we're talking about an introduction, here. Creating the spark of interest in students is the most important point in this class. There's always time after this to move them toward more expressive languages.
Maybe you felt you had to jump in and defend high level languages, and maybe slash the other guy's tires on the way out, but this reads as trollish. Plenty of people working in C find it plenty expressive. Is it "more" or "less" expressive to choose to express different things? I don't think so. This comes off as uninformed C bashing, sadly very common and accepted around here.
The rest of your comment, that it is good for learning or as a first language, makes more sense to me.
Python can be circuit bent into any semantic you desire, so I think it is a great introductory language.
I haven't taught an introductory Python course in years, but with Ipython Notebook I think it would be a blast.