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Jim Hightower: George Orwell Would Understand the Texas GOP: Mean and Crazy

By dianeravitch
April 27, 2024 //
6

Jim Hightower is an old-fashioned Texas liberal. He tries to understand what’s happened to his state in his blog. The GOP is just plain mean and crazy.

He writes:

If you think the GOP’s Congress of Clowns represents the fringiest, freakiest, pack of politicos that MAGA-world can hurl at us – you haven’t been to Texas.

It’s widely known, of course, that Ted Cruz, Greg Abbott, and most other top Republican officials here are obsequious Trump acolytes. Thus, Texas is infamously racing against Florida to be declared the stupidest, meanest, most-repressive state government in America, constantly making demonic attacks on women’s freedom, immigrants, voting rights, public schools, poor people, and so on. But I’m confident Texas will win this race to the bottom for one big reason: GOP crazy runs extraordinarily deep here.

We have a county-level layer of ultra-MAGA cultists constantly pressing the state’s far-right officials to march all the way to the farthest edge of extremism – then leap into absurdity. Therefore, the party officially supports abolishment of labor unions, elimination of the minimum wage, privatization of social security, legalization of machine guns, and… well, you get the drift. Now, though, local mad-dog Trumpistas are pushing their party straight into the abyss of autocracy by declaring war on H-E-B.

What’s that? H-E-B is a Texas chain of supermarkets beloved in communities throughout the state. “Beloved,” because the stores fully embrace the rich diversity of all people in our state, has affordable prices, values employees, and supports community needs.

Nonetheless, county Republican zealots screech that H-E-B violates their party ideology by accepting food stamps, opposing privatization of schools, and (horrors!) sponsoring some LBGTQ pride events. So, they’re demanding official condemnation of the grocery chain for – GET THIS – “advocating for policies contrary to the Republican Party of Texas platform.”

Yes, violating the party platform is to be criminalized. It’s the reincarnation of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four: Be MAGA… or else.

Categories BATS, Bigotry, Billionaires, Censorship, Civil Rights, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom to Read, Guns, Ignorance, Insane, Privatization, Racism, Republicans, Stupid, Texas

Texas: Book Banning Gets Nuttier, Along with Efforts to Ban DEI in Higher Education

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2024 //
16

When PEN America released its latest national report on book banning, the state with the worst record was Florida. If you hear any bragging about test scores in Florida, think twice. Educated people typically don’t fear books; uneducated people do.

Chris Tomlinson, columnist for The Houston Chronicle, reports that book banning is getting more absurd in Texas. Why do school board members think they can censor ideas and images that are widely available on the Internet? At the same time, the state has barred public universities from administering programs that promote “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

Tomlinson writes:

The Fort Bend Independent School District superintendent would have to ban department store catalogs and National Geographic magazines if the school board goes through with its latest book ban measure.

My colleague Elizabeth Sander reports that school trustees debated giving the superintendent sole authority over library books and textbooks, mandating that none “stimulate sexual desire” among students. 

Have none of them encountered an adolescent? The only books left would center on mathematics; even then, geometry would be iffy.

Fort Bend ISD is not the only public school system in which activists have seized control. Parents are challenging books at Lake Travis ISD, and a citizen panel will review books at Montgomery County public libraries, not librarians.

Nationwide, PEN America, a nonprofit that advocates for free expression, this week reported more than 4,000 instances of book banning during the first half of the current school year, more than in the entire previous 2022-23 school year.

Conservative book banners continue to shock and dismay with their absurdity, anti-intellectualism and renunciation of reality. Before there was online porn and young adult books about LGBTQ love, there was Sears Roebuck selling lingerie and National Geographic photographing semi-nude indigenous women.

Book bans don’t stop at nudity and sexuality; extremists are also targeting ideas they don’t like. For example, teachers may not discuss anything that might make a child uncomfortable lest they face a penalty under state law.

If my fourth grade teacher were subject to the same law, she could have lost her job for telling me enslavers brutalized the African Americans they held in bondage, contradicting my grandfather, who taught me our ancestors were “good slaveholders.”

Lately, it seems any state employee who acknowledges racism in our nation’s history or our present will lose their jobs. The University of Texas is cleaning house, firing dozens of educators dedicated to helping people from disadvantaged communities succeed in higher education.

UT-Austin President Jay Hartzell says the ideological purge is necessary to protect the long-term outlook of the institution. His shameful cowardice in the face of fascist bullies will forever mark him as a collaborator, not a hero.

Free speech and decades of progress toward a more honest assessment of who we are and where we come from are under attack. The wannabe oppressors are organized and winning, and yet, too many of us still don’t take the threat to our liberty seriously.

Categories Censorship, Curriculum, Democracy, Extremism, Freedom to Read, Texas

Florida: DeSantis Signs Bill to Limit Book Bans and Adds a Sugarplum for Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
April 19, 2024 //
5

Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill limiting the ability of non-parents to initiate book bans. That’s a step forward since any crank was free to challenge any book under previous law. But, the same law made it easier to close public schools and hand them over to the charter industry.

TALLAHASSEE — After more than 1,200 objections were filed to library books and other materials last school year, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday signed a bill to limit challenges by nonparents or guardians.

The wide-ranging bill (HB 1285) also includes changes designed to ease the process of charter schools taking over operations at traditional public schools that are failing.

The part of the measure dealing with book challenges came after the Republican-controlled Legislature and DeSantis approved measures that ramped up scrutiny of library books and classroom materials, leading to highly publicized disputes.

More than half of the 1,218 book objections during the 2022-2023 school year occurred in two counties, Clay and Escambia, according to a Senate staff analysis. The objections resulted in the removal of 186 books in the two counties.

The bill will require that any “resident of the county who is not the parent or guardian of a student with access to school district materials may not object to more than one material per month.”

During an event Monday, DeSantis said that some people who filed mass objections to books made a “mockery” of the process.

“The idea that someone can use the parents’ rights and the curriculum transparency to start objecting to every single book, to try to make a mockery of this, is wrong. And you had examples where books were put under review that are just normal books that have been in education for many, many years,” DeSantis said.

Meanwhile, parts of the bill related to underperforming public schools would “add some oomph” to the state’s process of allowing charter schools to take over operations, DeSantis said.

Under state law, if a school receives consecutive D or F grades based on various performance criteria, the school is given two years to improve to a C under what’s known as a “turnaround plan.” If the school’s grade doesn’t make such an improvement, one option is for the school to close and reopen as a charter school.

The bill signed Tuesday will speed up converting traditional public schools to charter schools under such circumstances, by giving districts a deadline to execute charter contracts. For schools reopening as charters, districts would have to execute contracts by Oct. 1 of the following school year, and charter organizations would assume “full operational control” by July.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, DeSantis, Education Industry, Florida, For-Profit, Freedom to Read

SAVE THE DATE: The Ravitch Lecture at Wellesley Is April 18, This Thursday!

By dianeravitch
April 16, 2024 //
12

All are welcome to a very important lecture at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Admission is free. Join me!

The speaker is a pioneer of critical race theory.

Professor Soo Hong, chair of the Education Department at Wellesley, released the following announcement.

We are thrilled to announce that our 2024 Ravitch Lecture in Education will be presented by Professor Patricia Williams ’72, University Distinguished Professor of Law and Humanities at Northeastern University. Professor Williams’s talk is titled, “Burying the Bodies: Book-Banning and the Legacy of Anti-Literacy Laws in Constructing Erasures of History.”

This is a topic that feels relevant now more than ever. 

The lecture will be held on Thursday, April 18, 4:30 PM in Jewett Auditorium. Please share the details of this event widely!

************************************************************

Description of “Burying the Bodies: Book-Banning and the Legacy of Anti-Literacy Laws in Constructing Erasures of History” 
We live in an oddly contradictory moment: politicians who position themselves as supporters of “absolute” freedom of speech simultaneously enact laws that restrict access to books about race, gender, or critical theory, and seek to constrain conversations about diversity, equity, and inclusion. There have always been “culture wars” in America—it is not surprising that conversations about traumatic histories and contested historical perspectives might be fractious. In a civil society, we commit to arguing our way to consensus, however noisily or uncomfortably, and even if it takes generations. But it is the mark of an uncivil—or authoritarian—society when we find ourselves without the right to speak, hear, write, publish, dissent, or share common space even in our disagreement. The First Amendment rightly allows us to curtail speech that poses an “imminent threat of physical harm.” But recent “anti-woke” laws banish from public spaces books and ideas that merely might inspire “shame,” “guilt,” or “discomfort.” This lecture will ponder the conceptual chasm between those two notions of constraint upon speech. What power imbalance, what uses of force are rationalized in erasing whole histories from collective contemplation? What civic dispossession is enacted when certain lives or lived narratives are discounted as intolerable, unknowable–whose mere recounting is silenced as illegal?

Wellesley Logo

Soo Hong

The lecture will be taped and available online at a later time.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Corruption, Cruelty, Curriculum, Democracy, Disruption, Education Reform, Extremism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Read, Racism

North Carolina: Michelle Morrow Is Not Qualified to Be Superintendent of Public Instruction

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2024 //
2

Gwen Frisbie-Fulton is a columnist for the News & Observer in North Carolina. She explains in this column why extremist Michelle Morrow is unqualified to be elected as state superintendent of public instruction. What the public knows about her is that she homeschools her children, she has called the public execution of Obama, Biden, Clinton, and other leading Democrats. But there’s more.

Frisbie-Fulton writes:

After years of being a science nerd, devouring books about space and astrophysics, my son recently became very athletic. This came as a surprise — he comes from a long line of artists and wanderers.

I embraced this new development wholeheartedly and cheered enthusiastically for his team from the sidelines. Next to me, always, was his coach, yelling support until his throat was raw.

A book-smart high school logic teacher, his coach was also learning the sport. He threw himself all in, researching and bringing different hill sprints and threshold runs into their practices. He read, researched and frequently solicited advice from others. The team never became top- tier, but every single runner improved their times and they made it to the regionals. Measured by wins, he might not have been the greatest coach — but he was a very solid leader.

This year, North Carolinians will head to the polls. While elections are inherently about politics, we will also be tasked to determine which candidates are equipped to lead.

To lead, someone must of course be experienced, but he or she also must be curious and open to about the world around them. And that is why I think that my son’s coach — whose politics I disagree with substantially —would be a better, more qualified candidate for superintendent of public instruction than GOP nominee Michelle Morrow.

Experience matters in leadership and Michele Morrow’s experience is extremely limited. While my son’s coach spends nine hours a day at the school, plus another two hours outside it on practice days, Morrow has homeschooled her children. Nonetheless, she has formed rigid opinions about North Carolina’s public schools, calling them “socialism centers” and “indoctrination centers” (WRAL).

Morrow not only lacks experience with public education, but she also lives a life very distant from what most students who rely on our schools know. While my son’s coach lives in an apartment complex where, no doubt, many of his students also live, Morrow lives in a wealthy suburb of Raleigh in a house valued at more than twice the average North Carolina home. In contrast to the Morrows, nearly half of all students in North Carolina are considered economically disadvantaged (with family incomes less than 185% of the federal poverty line). Morrow might believe that “the whole plan of the education system from day one has actually been to kind of control the thinking of our young people” (WRAL), but she fails to understand the supportive, stabilizing impact of public schools in children’s lives.

Good leaders are curious. While my son’s coach has a lot of experience with kids and schools, he didn’t have a much experience coaching — which is why he read, researched and sought advice from others. Morrow appears curiously uncurious. Active on the internet, she puts herself in an echo chamber of views, falling victim to conspiracy theories. During the pandemic, she used the QAnon hashtag #WWG1WGA multiple times and she spread disinformation about vaccinations (Fox 8).

Offline, Morrow further surrounds herself with people who will reinforce, not challenge or grow, her understanding of the world. She was photographed at a far-right candidate training session alongside John Fisher, a Proud Boy, and Sloan Rachmuth, an extremist provocateur who famously trolls and harasses her opponents on social media. Morrow served on the board of one of Sloan’s anti-public education projects (Libertas Prep, which appears to have never launched) alongside extremist Emily Rainey, who at one point claimed to have information about the attack on Moore County’s electrical grid. This insular clique mimics one anothers’ anti-diversity, anti-LGBTQIA+, and anti-education stances, just as Morrow parroted insurrectionist talking points while filming herself on her way to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6: “If you’re going to commit treason, if you’re going to participate in fraud in a United States election, we’re coming after you,” she said into her livestream.

If you don’t have experience, and you don’t surround yourself with different ideas and opinions, you must at least have a deep, principled commitment to fight for everyone to be a leader. My son and his coach spar regularly about politics and culture, but he makes sure my kid is always included, respected and heard. On the contrary, Michele Morrow prides herself on her intolerance, calling repeatedly for the “execution” of people she disagrees with (CNN).

She supports banning Islam (HuffPost), though our state has the 10th-largest Muslim population in the country. She has made anti-inclusivity a cornerstone of her campaign, railing against the LGBTQIA+ community, saying “There is no pride in perversion” (Media Matters). Morrow’s ability to lead schools that include many Muslim and LGBTQIA children is, in a word, impossible.

Having opinions doesn’t make you a leader: Experience, curiosity and the desire to work for everyone does.

When fully funded and at their best, North Carolina’s schools are creating our state’s future leaders — and our students need to see what good leadership looks like. The many teachers and coaches who model good leadership to our children day in and day out are not running for office this year; unfortunately Michele Morrow is.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Bigotry, Censorship, Curriculum, Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Freedom to Read, Home Schooling, North Carolina, Privatization

Thom Hartmann: Get Involved! Stop Fascism!

By dianeravitch
April 6, 2024 //
9

Thom Hartmann warns that we will install a fascist regime if Trump should be re-elected.

Every one of us must do what we can to prevent this from happening.

Our democracy has many defects and it sorely needs fundamental change, but it needs change for the better, not change for the worse. We need a government that will roll back the rule of the oligarchy, we need more equality of wealth and income, we need fewer billionaires, we need Medicare for all, we need to reverse Citizens United. We need many changes. But we don’t need fascism.

Hartmann writes:

Fascism doesn’t typically take over countries by military means (WWII’s temporary order notwithstanding); instead, it relies on rhetoric. 

Words. Speeches. News conferences. Rallies. Media. Money. And they all point in one direction: violence in service of the fascist leader.

The rhetorical embrace and appreciation of violence is one of the cardinal characteristics of fascism, and a big step was taken this week in a New York City courtroom to push back against the current fascist campaign being waged by Donald Trump against our American form of government.

Noting that Trump’s “statements were threatening, inflammatory, [and] denigrating” Judge Juan Merchan imposed a gag order on the orange fraudster and rapist, forbidding him from further attacks against the court’s staff, the DA’s staff, witnesses, and jurors. 

Why? Because all were concerned about becoming the victims of Trump’s fascist army.

Because the judge omitted himself from the list, as its his job to try send bad guys to prison, Trump got slick and attacked the judge’s daughter (who’s also not on the list). Now she’sgetting death threats. 

This isn’t the first time. Whenever Trump finds himself in trouble, fraud or violence follow, as has already been determined by a court in New York this month and we saw in the pattern of his presidency….

Analysts of fascism from Umberto Eco to Hannah Arendt to Timothy Snyder and Ruth Ben-Ghiat generally agree on a core set of characteristics of a fascist movement. It includes:

— A romantic idealization of a fictional past (“Make America Great Again”)
— Clear definition of an enemy within that is not quite human but an “other” (“vermin,” “rats,” “animals,” all phrases Trump has used just in past weeks to describe immigrants and employees of our criminal justice system)
— Vilification of the media (“fake news” or lugenpresse)
— Repeated attacks on minorities and immigrants as a rallying point for followers (shared hatred often binds people together)
— Disparagement of elections and the rule of law (because neither favors the fascist movement)
— Glorification of political violence and martyrdom (the January 6th “patriots” and Ashley Babbitt)
— Hostility to academia and science leading to the elevation of Joe Sixpack’s ability to “do his own research” (simple answers to complex questions or issues)
— Embrace of fundamentalist religion and the moral codes associated with it
— Rejection of the rights of women and members of the queer community as part of the celebration of toxic masculinity
— Constant lies, even about seemingly inconsequential matters (Hannah Arendt noted in 1978: “If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer.”)
— Performative patriotism that replaces the true obligations of citizenship (like voting and staying informed) with jingoistic slogans, logos, and mass events: faux populism
— Collaboration with oligarchs while claiming to celebrate the average person

Donald Trump and his MAGA movement check every single box.

So did the American Confederacy and the Democratic Party it seized in the 1860s. And the American fascist movements of the 1920s and 1930s (albeit, they were much smaller). And the white supremacy movement of the mid-20th century, from the KKK to the White Citizens’ Councils (ditto).

This is not our first encounter with fascism, as I detail in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy. Nor will it be our last: fascism has a long history and an enduring appeal for insecure, angry psychopaths who want to seize political power and the great wealth or opportunity that’re usually associated with it…

Preventing a fascist takeover is not particularly complex, and there are encouraging signs that America is beginning to move in this direction. It involves a few simple steps:

— Recognize and call out the fascists and their movement as fascists

With Trump and his fascist MAGA movement, this is happening with greater and greater frequency. Yesterday, for example, the Financial Times’ highly worldwide-respected columnist Martin Wolf published an article titled Fascism has Changed, but it is Not Dead.

“[W]hat we are now seeing,” Wolf writes, “is not just authoritarianism. It is authoritarianism with fascistic characteristics.” He concludes his op-ed with: “History does not repeat itself. But it rhymes. It is rhyming now. Do not be complacent. It is dangerous to take a ride on fascism.”

For a top columnist in one of the world’s senior financial publications to call a candidate for US president and his movement fascists would have been unthinkable at any other time in modern American history. And it’s happening with greater and greater frequency across all aspects of American media.

— Debunk and ridicule extremism while ostracizing fascists from “polite company”

Increasingly, Trump’s fascist movement and those aligned with it are becoming caricatures of themselves. Book-banners and disruptors of public education are reaching the end of their fad-like existence. Moms for Liberty is a sad joke founded by some of the country’s more bizarre examples of hypocrisy; the former head of the RNC was fired from NBC for her participation in Trump’s fascist attempt to overthrow our government; and CPAC has shriveled into a hardcore rump (pun intended) faction of the conservative movement.  

Political cartoonists lampoon Trump followers as toothless rubes and obese, gun-obsessed men; so many women are rejecting Republicans as dating partners that both sociologists and media have noticed; and the GOP is looking at a possible bloodbath (to use Trump’s favorite term) this November, regardless of how many billions in dark money their billionaires throw into the races. We saw the first indicator of that this week in Alabama.

— Support democratic institutions and politicians who promote democracy

The media landscape of America has become centralized, with a handful of massive and mostly conservative corporations and billionaires owning the majority of our newspapers, radio and TV stations, and online publications.

Nonetheless, there are many great online publications beating the drum for democracy, and many allow subscriptions or donations. My list includes Raw Story, Alternet, Daily Kos, Common Dreams, Salon, Talking Points Memo, The New Republic, Mother Jones, The Nation, The Guardian, Democratic Underground, Jacobin, OpEdNews, Slate, and Free Speech TV. In addition, there are dozens of worthwhile publications that share this Substack platform with Hartmann Report: you can find my recommendations here. And I’m live daily on SirusXM Channel 127 (Progress) and on Free Speech TV, as are many of my progressive colleagues. Read, use, listen, share, and support them.

There are also multiple organizations dedicated to promoting democracy and democratic values in America. They range from your local Democratic Party to Indivisible, Progressive Democrats of America, Move to Amend, MoveOn.org, Roots Action, Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), EMILY’s List, Run for Something, NextGen America, Advancement Project, League of Women Voters, Democracy Initiative, Common Cause, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

Other democratic institutions we should be supporting by joining, donating, or participating in their governance include public schools, libraries, city councils, county government groups, etc. When MAGA fascists show up to disrupt these institutions and intimidate their members, we should be there to defend them.

President Biden, speaking last fall at an event honoring John McCain, laid it on the line and challenged all of us:

“As I’ve said before, we’re at an inflection point in our history — one of those moments that only happens once every few generations. Where the decisions we make today will determine the course of this country — and the world — for decades to come.

“So, you, me, and every American who is committed to preserving our democracy carry a special responsibility. We have to stand up for America’s values embodied in our Declaration of Independence because we know MAGA extremists have already proven they won’t. We have to stand up for our Constitution and the institutions of democracy because MAGA extremists have made clear they won’t.

“History is watching. The world is watching. Most important, our children and grandchildren are watching.”

Categories ALEC, Billionaires, Corruption, Courage, Cruelty, Dark Money, Democracy, Education Industry, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Read, Privatization, Trump

Jim Hightower: Why Tom Paine Was the Greatest of All Founding Fathers

By dianeravitch
March 18, 2024 //
23

Jim Hightower is a Texan who represents the best of the state. He blogs at “Jim Hightower’s Lowdown.” This is a terrific post.

In my view, the greatest of America’s “Founding Fathers” was not Washington or Jefferson – nor, technically, he wasn’t even an American. Rather, he was a British immigrant and itinerate agitator for real democracy, enlightenment, and universal human rights.

He was Thomas Paine, a prolific, profound, persuasive, and widely popular pamphleteer in the movement for American Independence. With plain language and genuine passion for the cause, Paine’s 47-page pamphlet, Common Sense, was so compelling in its support of the Revolution that it was passed around from person to person – and even read aloud in taverns! But Paine wasn’t content with democratic rhetoric – he actually believed in an egalitarian society, and his post-revolution writings (including Age of Reason, and Agrarian Justice) unabashedly demanded that the new hierarchy of US leaders fulfill the promise of democracy.

Even before the War for Independence, Paine called for slaves to be freed and slavery prohibited. After the war, he terrified most of the gentlemen of means who’d signed the Declaration of Independence by insisting that non-landowners be eligible to vote and hold office (John Adams was so appalled by this that he decried Common Sense as a “crapulous mess”).  But Paine just kept pushing, calling for women’s suffrage, progressive taxation, state-funded childcare, a guaranteed minimum income, universal public education, strict separation of church and state, and adoption of some of the democratic principles of the Iroquois Nation.

This is Jim Hightower saying… Don’t tell small-minded, right-wing demagogues like Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott – but Thomas Paine was WOKE! Some 250 years before their push to impose autocracy, plutocracy, and theocracy over us, this revolutionary founder championed social justice and economic fairness. As one historian noted, “we are today all Paine’s children,” for he imbued America’s destiny with democratic impulse and aspiration.

PS, from the staff— Hightower was recently give the Thomas Paine award by the Florida Veterans for Common Sense, where he learned a ton about Paine that he never knew. Hence the inspiration for this commentary! Thanks FLVCS!

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Categories Democracy, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Read, History

California: Orange County Recalls 2 Rightwing School Board Members

By dianeravitch
March 16, 2024 //
4

Voters in Orange County, California, ousted two culture warriors, making clear their dissatisfaction with the attacks on curriculum, books, teachers, and students.

Howard Blume reports in The Los Angeles Times:

Voters in the city of Orange appear to have ousted two conservative school board members who had spearheaded policies widely opposed by advocates for LGBTQ+ youth in a recall election viewed as a local bellwether for the culture wars in education.


The fiercely contested recall election in the Orange Unified School District intensified with the board majority’s approval in the fall of a parent-notification policy requiring educators to inform parents when a student requests “to be identified as a gender other than that student’s biological sex or the gender listed on the birth certificate or any other official records.”


A legal battle over the issue is playing out as California Atty. General Rob Bonta pursues a court challenge of such policies enacted by a handful of conservative-leaning school boards. His lawsuit asserts that the rules put transgender and gender-nonconforming students in “danger of imminent, irreparable harm” by potentially forcibly “outing” them at home before they’re ready…

The recall came to be an early litmus test on the resonance with voters of issues that have roiled school boards throughout the nation: the teaching of racism and Black history, the rights of LGBTQ+ youth versus the rights of their parents, restrictions on LGBTQ+ symbols and related curriculum, and the removal of library books with sexual content — especially LGBTQ+ content — from school libraries.

Categories California, Censorship, Cruelty, Curriculum, Democracy, Disruption, Education Reform, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Read, Gender

Peter Greene: CBS’ “60 Minutes” Confronts Moms for Liberty on Book Banning

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2024 //
7

Peter Greene highly recommends the “60 Minutes” segment about book banning and Moms for Liberty. He pins them on the essential hypocrisy at the heart of their campaign: the M4L asserts the right to deny certain books to all children in a school or a district, thus denying the “liberty” of parents who disagree with them. There is a world of difference between a parent saying “I don’t want my child to read that book” and a parent saying “ No child in that school should be allowed to read that book.”

Peter Greene writes:

If you have not seen the 60 Minutes piece on book banning, here it is. Go ahead and watch; it will be thirteen and a half minutes well spent.

There are several things on display here, not the least of which is a school district taking a sensible students-first, parents-involved approach to the issue of difficult books. 

Reporter Scott Pelley gets right to the heart of several issues. The difference between giving parents the tools to control what their own children can read (something the district also provides in spades) and trying to control what other parents can let their children read. The outrage-enhancing technique of treating isolated mistakes as proof of some widespread conspiracy.

In the midst of it all, the Moms for Liberty, with Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich finally seen in the footage from an interview they sat for way back in October of 2023. 

The piece is tough on them. The parents that are set up to represent the district are Republican, conservative, combat veterans. Pelley in repeated voice overs points out that the Moms are evasive and avoid answering question but instead retreating to their talking points (he does not point out that they are seasoned political coms professionals, but he doesn’t portray them as cookie-baking domestics, either). Some of the talking points were so six months ago. “We don’t co-parent with the government,” said the women whose demands include forcing the government to help them with the part of parenting that involves keeping an eye on what your children read and watch. 

Their PR firm (Cavalry Strategies) was on the case this morning, emailing out the M4L transcript that includes the part that CBS didn’t include, and offering the duo for press interviews to tell their story. It’s an odd choice, because the stuff they want you to see is just more of the non-answering that CBS showed. That and they are really, really big sad that CBS chose not to air them reading the Really Dirty Parts or Certain Books. This remains one of their weirdest arguments–since this part of this book is too objectionable to read in certain situations, it must be too objectionable to be found in any situation. Like, it’s not okay for me pee on the steps of City Hall at noon, so it must not be okay for me to pee anywhere, ever.

But the question that Pelley asked was a really, really good one. The Moms led into it by saying that although they love teachers so very much, there are some “rogue teachers” out there (I can hear the ty-shirts being printed already). “Parents send their children to school to be educated, not indoctrinated into ideology.”

And so Pelley asked the obvious question– “What ideology are the children being indoctrinated into?”

And the Moms wouldn’t answer. The extended answer in their email (and some tweets) suggests that they’re talking about gender and sex stuff, and their go to example is telling five year olds that genders can be changed). 

The answer remains unclear. What exactly is the objection? What is the problem? What does “gender ideology” even mean? Because the harder I stare at it, the more it seems as if the problem is acknowledging that LGNTQ persons exist.

But in the MAGA Mom playbook, that’s not it as all, which brings us Pelley’s other fruitless attempt to get the Moms to explain what they mean by all the “groomer” language that they use on their own social media. They really didn’t want to talk about that, though they did insist that they like gay folks just fine. They didn’t attempt to address the groomer question in their responses to the 60 Minutes piece. Perhaps that’s because their premise makes no sense. 

But if you boil it all down, this is what you get.

If you acknowledge that LGBTQ persons exist in front of children, then you are grooming those children to become LGBTQ.

Part of the premise for that is an old one– if you believe that nobody is born That Way, that nobody is LGBTQ by nature, then you must believe that all LGBTQ persons are recruited.

But to jump from there to the notion that simply acknowledging that LGBTQ persons exist must only be about recruiting–that’s a hell of a leap. And it leads to the worst culture panic impulse, which is to erase those persons, to treat them as if their very existence must be a dirty secret.

And because acknowledging them is equated with grooming other children, this becomes the worst brand of othering. To make it okay to attack the Other, you have to establish that the Other represents a threat, that you need to defend yourself against them. And that makes violence against them okay.

So when Ryan Walters says that he’s not playing “woke gender games,” he’s saying that he won’t acknowledge that LGBTQ persons exist, and that anyone who does acknowledge they exist is trying to attack children and groom them and so that “woke mob” is attacking, and so it’s okay to attack back. When the Lt. Governor and gubernatorial candidate calls LGBTQ persons “filth,” particularly in the context of talking about them in school at all ever, that message is pretty clear. 

Pelley’s unanswered questions point us at the nuance missing in the Moms for Liberty outrage and panic factory, the nuance that recognizes that reasonable intelligent people can disagree about the value of certain books. In the real world, there’s a huge difference between showing six year olds graphic depictions of the ways one can use a penis and a non-graphic depiction of LGBTQ persons. There’s a vast gulf between grooming some small child for sexual abuse and simply acknowledging there are some LGBTQ persons in the world (and possibly in the classroom or the homes of class members). There’s a planet-seized difference between saying “LGBTQ persons are not extraordinary or unnatural” and saying “You should become an LGBTQ person.”  And yet, in the Moms for Liberty universe, there is no difference between any of those things. 

It’s very hard to distinguish between the opportunists and the truly panicked on this issue. The Heritage Foundations Project 2025 seems like an opportunist’s political project, but it is also shot through with what seems like a sincere and extreme LGBTQ panic. The Ziegler scandal deserves attention because it suggests that one founding M4L member is not all that freaked out about non-het sex. 

But at a certain level, it doesn’t matter whether all this LGBTQ panic is sincere or not, because as the toxic sludge filters through the culture, some people feel justified, even encouraged, in violence and mistreatment of actual human beings. No amount of carefully refined talking points will change that; only the kind of nuanced, complex conversation that doesn’t get you a special seat at the MAGA table. 

The encouraging part of the 60 Minutes piece is that it shows how ordinary folks can actually have some of those conversations. Over a hundred citizens came together to have some thoughtful consideration about the list of 97 books that were marked for removal, and they kept 92 of them. Imagine that.

Categories Censorship, Democracy, Disruption, Extremism, Freedom to Read, Librarians, Libraries, Literature

Florida District Alters Illustrations in Classic Children’s Books to Appease Moms for Liberty

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2024 //
46

The local leader of Moms for Liberty was outraged! There was a book in the elementary school library that depicted a naked child! Another showed the naked butt of a goblin! What depravity!

Judd Legum and Tesnim Zekeria at Popular Information have the story, which actually happened in Indian River County, Florida, when Jennifer Pippen of Moms for Liberty complained about Maurice Sendak’s classic In the Night Kitchen.

Pippen said the book was “pornographic” because it showed a naked little boy in a bathtub; if you peered closely, you could see that the little boy had a penis. Shocking!

The other book that offended Pippen was Unicorns Are the Worst, which depicted a goblin with a naked butt.

The answer: Draw clothing on the “pornographic” images. So now the little boy is taking a bath while wearing shorts, and the goblin has long pants on.

In other cases, the Indian River County librarians were more creative. Another book Pippin sought to remove was Draw Me A Star by Eric Carle, who is best known for The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Pippin was concerned about this image of “two adults that were naked.” She said that her concerns were addressed when the district librarians drew “board shorts on the man” and “put the girl in a bikini.” 

Also targeted was the book No, David! because it included this image.

Well, you simply can’t show Adam and Eve buck naked in the Garden of Eden, can you? Or can the author and illustrator of a children’s book show a boy’s butt.

It would be satisfying if the author or publisher of the targeted books sued the district for defacing them.

Categories Censorship, Extremism, Freedom to Read, Libraries, Literature
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