Holocaust survivors and politicians have warned about the resurgence of antisemitism and denial as the world remembered Nazi atrocities and commemorated the 77th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp. https://t.co/IN4fjtu5SF
— AP Europe (@AP_Europe) January 27, 2022
Meanwhile…
Why can’t we find inoffensive ways to tell the story of the most horrific mass murder in human history? https://t.co/tvX0yMAcAZ
— Mig Greengard (@chessninja) January 27, 2022
Reminds me that when Schindler’s List came out, the same folks complained about nudity in the concentration camp scenes.
— Kevin Bartner (@heshsson) January 27, 2022
They don’t understand art or history, sure, but they don’t trust or respect children, either. https://t.co/ajeL19qXfd
— Peter A. Shulman ?? (@pashulman) January 27, 2022
The school board’s specific complaint was the curse words.
The irony is that at LEAST half those 9th graders have already devoted many many hours to thoroughly researching the internet porn sites
— @WorldsMostHumble (@WorldsMostHumb1) January 27, 2022
— Jesse Hawken (@jessehawken) January 26, 2022
But… but… ‘Judeo-Christian!’
This is the same root cause as the appropriation of Holocaust tropes among antivaxxers. The lack of shame in the appropriation is because it is to them really nothing more than a historical abstraction.
— Jake Anbinder (@JakeAnbinder) January 27, 2022
The McMinn County public schools have more students than Yale College. https://t.co/zy0pES25dh
— Fred Has Some Great News For You About NFTs (@LesserFrederick) January 27, 2022
Baud
FWIW, the premise is a lie. Conservatives talk about public schools all the time.
Cermet
This is one time that the phrase “Think of the Children” actually applies; children need real, unvarnished history – teaching children watered down and “safe” history is like teaching math without numbers or logic. Can be done but no one really learns anything of value. The lesson of history is: Either remember it or relive it – that should scare anyone.
Old Man Shadow
Maybe they didn’t like the way the book portrayed some “very fine people.”
Or maybe they don’t want kids to think about where Hitler got some of his ideas for dealing with “inferior” races.
MisterDancer
In somewhat related news:
This is how they do. This is how they always do. They love to stir this crap up when they feel they are ascendant, but in reality are a-feared and terrified of their hold on power.
The cheap theatrics, fear-mongering and Othering at the heart of these “what about the children?!?!?!?” attacks? They hide their desire to find new and exciting ways to keep their coalitions afloat, to keep their followers excited to go to the polls.
It’s HORRIFIC.
Old Man Shadow
@Cermet: i don’t think they care if it happens again so long as they’re the ones running the camp.
Kay
These public intellectuals and First Amendment experts must see the difference between state statutes banning speech and the Oberlin Student Council’s observations on menu choices, right?
Our public intellectuals seem to be slipping in quality. I wonder if it’s because of nepotism, increasingly entrenched income inequality and special insider advantages, which has elevated mediocre people and kept the people who might have competed and taken their slots out of the game.
germy
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Baud: I note that Youngkin’s first two actions were attacks on schools: banning non-existent CRT and mask mandates. Schools must feel like an easy target.
And he’s still not as bad as whatever place it was that was talking about putting cameras in every classroom and making teachers wear a mic. I can’t believe that one will happen if only because of the cost.
But really, under these circumstances, who’d be a teacher?
marklar
All I can say is “What a perfect way for Conservative Christians to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27, 2022) this year.”
Eolirin
Looking at their reasoning its pretty clear that the biggest problem here is that their only understanding of ethics, history, culture, etc is shallow and performative. Whether the right words are used in the right places, whether the right kind of decorum is kept, etc. It doesn’t actually matter what the content is, as long as it doesn’t upset sensibility.
There’s no real engagement with anything, no maturation or development. Just a rigid set of rules for what is and isn’t allowed and no room for anything beyond that. These are really small people. I’d feel more for them if they weren’t actively trying to deny a whole lot of kids the opportunity to be more than that, because it’s kind of sad.
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Right-wingers.
germy
I think it was someone here who suggested making politicians wear a mic when they visit with their donors and pacs.
ian
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Parents and supporters don’t think this one through. Think about all of the stupid, embarrassing, and even occasionally criminal things children do in schools. More cameras in schools would be way worse for students than any one else. There are also a metric F*ton of privacy issues that would be infringed upon by teachers with cameras and mikes.
Jeffro
Yup.
Clear sign of a party/movement with nothing to offer but constant fear-mongering. Clear sign of a party/movement that feels the whole country slipping away from them, and rightly so.
Kay
Oh, well. Now that the cancel culture panic these people incited to make a buck is winding down in elite circles, I’m sure they’ll move on to some other stupid panic here shortly.
There’s probably only so many times someone will pay for the same essay on “cancel culture”.
germy
The choice is clear:
Matt McIrvin
@Eolirin: Concern-trolling about civility and decorum is just a polite way of saying “u mad bro?” The garbage these people will put up with on the other side really illustrates how hypocritical it is.
Professor Bigfoot
@Kay: “Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America”
Cameron
@marklar: I’m sure they’ll find the time for a Two-Minute Hate sometime today.
Kay
@ian:
Students are their absolute last concern. They started the CRT panic IN public schools when schools were reeling from covid and trying to recover. No concern about students there! They could give one shit about public school students.
Keep in mind these are the same people who pitched a fit because Chicago public schools closed at the height of omicron. They have spent the last six months preventing public schools from getting work done, with mask screeching, with vaccine screeching, with CRT screeching. They are conducting this adult political campaign inside public schools.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
Like when they’re banning them from using some books.
Eolirin
@Matt McIrvin: I generally agree, but the tenor of those quotes doesn’t read that way to me here. I think they’re being mostly sincere.
MisterDancer
@Eolirin: I would challenge that they even have a set of rigid rules.
These books weren’t an issue, until they chose for them to be such. It’s just like Abortion: the nascent Evangelical political movement chose to attack Abortion, years after Roe was decided, because they thought it could be a fulcrum for getting votes.
And as historical lynching parties — or the signage at any anti-abortion rally — shows, they’re eager to upset “sensibilities” when it’s to manipulate people’s emotions to keep ’em in line.
Kay
@Professor Bigfoot:
It’s all such junk. Three months they’ve been watching these state statutes go in. Why are they so incredibly slow? Good Christ. I hope Harvard isn’t all legacies. They’re fucking morons.
dm
I suspect that 10-0 vote is due to the fact that only one (if even that many) of the members of the school board had looked at Maus, and instead were just responding to hot takes.
Rather like the conversation on Twitter.
It’s irresponsible, and not so far from the “Good German” epithet of the middle of the last century (though I wonder how many would understand that epithet today). Willful ignorance about the evil being done.
As to the “Conservatives complain about Yale, liberals complain about school boards” comment — seems to me that liberals are complaining about state legislatures dictating how subjects be treated in classrooms, too.
You can’t be a biology teacher, you can’t be a teacher in any social science area (especially not history). Maybe math is safe (ha! says a witness to many, many math curriculum wars)? Reading? Reading might lead to reading “uncomfortable” books….
Kent
Teacher here. This is literally impossible to do because of existing privacy laws. If you want to record a classroom for any purpose you need to get signed waivers from every single parent. Every single one. Teachers who need to tape their classroom for things like National Board Certification reviews face this problem.
scav
First thought. Ah. Well. Tennessee.
Second thought. Waiting for McMinn to go after the big mouse in the room. Donald Duck has no pants.
Bostondreams
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Florida. It’s Florida. Again.
Kent
A bunch of these dipshits seem to think that the “other side” of the Holocaust issue was that it didn’t happen or wasn’t quite so bad.
That’s not the actual case at all. Holocaust deniers are a tiny fringe. The actual other side is the Nazi side which doesn’t deny the Holocaust at all. The other side is that the Holocaust happened and was a good thing. There is a ton of Nazi propaganda to that effect.
Eolirin
@MisterDancer: I was referring very narrowly to the individual board members quoted, not the broader movement. You’re absolutely right if we zoom out.
But it’s entirely plausible that the reason that this action is only happening now is because no one on that board actually read the book until now. The more savvy actors in the movement selectively draw attention to things, and then they become problems, because they’re framed in ways to rile up the people who hold those kinds of values, but a lot of the individual actions are coming from a place of sincerity. (Edit: I do not mean this in a positive way, these people are sincerely dull and unimaginative)
I don’t think it’s possible for everyone, or even most of the actors, to be in on the conspiracy, so to speak. This only works if you have enough “well meaning” people with epic blind spots and a lack of curiousity about how the world works.
germy
Bostondreams
@Kent: It’s House Bill 1055 here in Florida. It tries to get around that by saying that all involved will be notified there will be recording and that identities of students ‘not involved in an incident’ will be concealed.
Theoretically this is to prevent teachers abusing students. :/
germy
Baud
@germy:
Both sides!
UncleEbeneezer
When I first started paying attention, listening to Black voices and reading books and articles about Racism a few years ago I noticed the extreme tendency by white people to constantly play the Dictionary Definition game. I would bringing up disproportionate killings by police, redlining, gentrification, healthcare access etc., and white people (even in very liberal places like LGM and here) would be like “but that’s NOT what ‘Racism’ means?” They of course wanted to insist that the definition of “Racism” was simply interpersonal prejudice and discrimination and that including Systemic forms of racism under the larger umbrella term of “Racism” was wrong and confusing and only hurts our side etc. It was frustrating as shit, but I noticed that that was one of the things that always got the most pushback. White people really don’t want to acknowledge Systemic Racism because once we do that, our ancestors and family and even ourselves are now complicit and the moral obligation to end it now expands to include us. We lose the ability to say “well that doesn’t really involve ME” and hand-wave away the vast majority of Racism in America. That’s what the whole CRT panic seems like to me. It is all an effort to make sure White students maintain this really narrow view of Racism that only includes inter-personal forms so they can point to the Klan member who lit the burning cross as the villain but not start asking questions about whether Grandpa was friends with that guy and supported the same Racist politicians and policies. Once you get into the reality that POLICIES can be racist (even when not overtly so), well that puts most White People’s behavior in a very different light. And so that is what the Right is doing now, trying to pass legislation to effectively define Racism in the way that is most beneficial for maintaining the myth of White Innocence and to allow the perpetuation of White Supremacy. Sad, but hardly surprising
?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@germy: That would wipe out at least half of current YA fiction
ETA: “Recreational sexualization” is big on the teen hit list!
WereBear
@Kay: We’re running our own Upper Class Twit of the Year competition.
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Only the good half.
Eolirin
Also this obsessive focus on books in an era where the internet exists is so weird to me.
Y’all aren’t gonna stop kids from reading about whatever they want. Everything anyone could ever think to talk about is in their pockets at all times.
Jeffro
@Kent: yup!
Same with student teachers doing videos for coaching, or their portfolios, or both.
MisterDancer
That’s because it’s not a conspiracy. This isn’t “planned” from the top down, just…encouraged.
It’s a pyramid scheme, an MLM situation. Someone “up top” triggers these controversies, and people below — most crucially from their POV the voters I mentioned — pick them up as “real”. And those folx can go on to create and promote their own situations, extend these bad faith efforts via “good faith” concerns, passed via word of mouth and grassroots efforts that are hard to notice, much less defend against.
I found the transcript of the meeting where the school board decided to pull MAUS. It’s a depressing, yet fascinating, read that I’m still working thru. I might say more on this later, once I’m done.
Roger Moore
@Kent:
I don’t think there’s an intellectually coherent argument against teaching the holocaust. It’s like the way the anti-climate change people keep changing their argument depending on the audience. The arguments aren’t there to make any kind of sensible point; they exist solely to deflect attention. Holocaust deniers and minimizers are just the slightly less awful side of people who hate the holocaust because it was incomplete.
brendancalling
Ya know, I complain about Vermont but at least I work in a school district that DOESN’T ban books.
I’ve spent my downtime today sending nasty emails to the McMinn School Board. Hoping for some responses, and will absolutely share them if they arrive!
Eolirin
@MisterDancer: I think we’re in agreement.
MisterForkbeard
@Baud: Liberals also talk about Conservatives trying to overthrow the country, sucking up to Russia, changing the laws so white people never have to feel uncomfortable, etc.
Lots of targets of “Republican Excess”. This shit isn’t nitpicking.
germy
Mr. Shapiro has thoughts on the next Supreme Court nominee (screenshot because he decided to delete it):
https://alicublog.blogspot.com/2022/01/the-supreme-court-nominee-is-ni-clang.html
Kent
@Roger Moore:
@Kent:
Well, the intellectually honest white supremacist argument is that it didn’t go far enough. Or that it was a good thing. You can find endless volumes of Nazi propaganda to that effect from the 30s and early 40s. The Holocaust denial bullshit is just those people knowing they can’t actually say that in public anymore. So they fudge.
RSA
That place would be the entire state of Florida. Wow. I hadn’t heard about this story.
Kent
As long as parents are able to look at video of their student’s classes it is a violation of privacy. There is no way to hand-wave around it which is why this bill will either fail or be tossed out by the courts.
The whole point, as I understand it, is so that conservative parents can eavesdrop on their kids teachers and turn them in for things like teaching CRT or anything else they don’t like.
Kent
HS teacher here and parent of teens. The funny thing about this is that these dipshits are fighting a 20th Century war and don’t even know it. Pretty much every school kid in the US these days has a school-issued chromebook or equivalent (iPads or other laptops). And of course they all have phones. Pretty much no kids go to the library these days to find BOOKS on any topic like LGBT issues. BOOKS? The notion would be laughable to most teens.
MisterDancer
So, I speed-read the meeting minutes of the McMinn County Board of Education, when they voted to ban MAUS.
It’s a shitstorm.
This opening statement sets it off:
Everything happening in this that rolls up to the ban, comes from Board Members saying “many” parents have complained about the language. Or, and one nude woman, I think (er, complained about as book content, not that a nude woman was one of those complaining…)
At least one Board Member (the 2nd most vocially critical, from what I can tell) says he’s not even seen MAUS.
As such, much of the discussion is really about how to hold the book to community standards. It’s hard for me to tell if the discussion itself is in good faith to be honest. They go back-and-forth over basically censoring MAUS to hold to those standards, and then, in what feels like an out-of-nowhere bit, they just end up voting to ban it with a caveat:
[EDIT: to be clear, I don’t see anyone even hinting to not teach The Holocaust. Just that it should be taught without cussin’, which is a stupid hill to die on (see also comments on showing kids SCHINDLER’S LIST, above).]
There feels like a lot to unpack here, starting with massive uncertainly about the state standards and curriculum, and flowing down from there to end up with the train wreak of a decision. But I’m far from an expert, in these things.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
My mom was always a RWNJ dumbass who appreciated the oeuvre of Archie Bunker, but at least there was no restriction or concern over anything I ever read.
If the McMinn County candyasses saw my blue collar, union area, social justice oriented, urban Catholic boy’s high school various reading assignments, they’d pass out from the vapors.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Eolirin:
In their world, the “children” are perpetually 6 years old until marriage.
germy
I don’t think they care. How much of their battle is performative or just groundwork for bigger battles?
trollhattan
Do the McMinn County county schools teach “The Wowah of Nothern Aggression”? And was the wowah started because of Yankee gummint overreach? Know where my money’s going on this bet.
schrodingers_cat
RSS-BJP is using the Nazi playbook as an instruction manual. They have escalated their initiatives since Modi was reelected in 2019 but the world is mostly not paying attention.
There have been several dozen “religious assemblies” which have called for a Muslim genocide. No arrests made for blatant hate speech. Meanwhile several journalists, student activists and intellectuals languish in jail without a trial over spurious charges under the draconian anti-terrorism laws.
George Stanton of the Genocide Watch outlines the problem.
Kay
@WereBear:
I feel sorry for these kids. No, it’s not helicopter parenting at all to insist on video monitoring of your child’s every word and move in school.
STIFLING. I would have absolutely hated it as a child. They know these kids are going into THE WORLD, right? That they won’t be able to monitor them forever?
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@germy:
“Recreational sex” was a big go-to among us “children” aged 15-18 back in my day. What do these people think teens want to do? Listen to smarmy, vapid praise music and attend dry pot lucks?
Mike in NC
Eugene Robinson has a column out about the new governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, in which he states that one cannot have “Trumpism Lite”. That sure is a good description of fleece vested Youngkin and his minions.
Lobo
Let’s just name them “Snowflake” laws and decisions.
Sure Lurkalot
@Jeffro: I might add they have addicted their base to moral panic per se. They’re not complete without a daily dose of outrage and it matters little about what. My Fox watching brother just flits from one thing to another. Hunter Biden, now Fauci, who or what is next he doesn’t give a shit about until he’s told to.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Kay:
They normally don’t give a shit, but somebody decided to mobilize the Karens (sorry to all actual named Karens to use that word) to come out for the precious children who may hear something critical about their society, ancestry or people who share their skin color.
Benw
So the anti-cancel culture side has cancelled Maus and “gay and transgender topics”? The parental choice side has unilaterally removed parent’s choice for their kids to read Maus and “gay and transgender topics”? Got it.
Kay
I love how we’re all pretending this isn’t getting worse. The most popular cable news channel pumps out this poison hour after hour and the issue is books in schools.
Gets worse every single month.
Eolirin
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Yeah, that’s another part of the problem.
Kay
@Benw:
And the same conservatives who used to talk about “grit” in children and champion learning to be independent want video monitoring of every word they say and every interaction they have, with state encouraged tattling in case the video misses an exchange.
Eunicecycle
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: sometimes not even then. Donnie just called his 40 year old married daughter one of his “children” the other day.
Eolirin
@Kay: Actually I think he may be on to something, we should kick out all the people who listen to Brian Kilmeade. They are poisonous and don’t belong here.
WereBear
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Indeed their final plan. No schools, no universities, no more science!
Mike in NC
The eternal Republican dilemma regarding books they object to: ban them or burn them.
Kay
@Eolirin:
“Don’t belong there”. Where does he belong, this nasty freak who attacks people for a fat paycheck? I don’t want him in my town. We’re full up with sleazy assholes. Have already taken in our share.
Kay
@Eolirin:
If they want to live in a country where there’s an indigenous population of white europeans they can go back where they came from, to those countries, because the United States isn’t one of them.
They’re in the wrong country.
Benw
@Kay: they put the hippo in hypocrisy!
Ghost of Joe Liebling*s Dog
“You were happily reading a graphic novel that depicts the Holocaust when your peace of mind was disturbed by seeing a tiny drawing of a naked mouse and the word ‘bitch’? Gosh … I’m just praying that you’ll recover someday.”
Yarrow
@Kay: They’re just preparing them for the real world where employers monitor employee’s every move, including what you do when you work from home.
Kay
Guffaw. Good for him. He should just go on tik tok and read his book. They’ll flock to it, like curious little birds.
gvg
@trollhattan: I grew up in the south. I have to say I never heard it called that until I was an adult and that was people from elsewhere making fun of what they believed we were taught. It was the Civil War. I can’t say that some other area somewhere in the south at some time didn’t do the fake name, but it really isn’t a thing down here. they are quite comfortable with calling it the Civil War. They may fudge how bad the slave owners are but my school books were pretty clear.
Kids get that at home, not mainstream public schools.
Kay
@Yarrow:
Wouldn’t you find it stifling though? “OMG, I JUST got away from you people for six hours and now you’re back?”
I got this! Sixth grade is going fine. I’m not scared of the books.
Yarrow
@Kay: Yes, of course I would find it stifling. Doesn’t mean it won’t happen to them once they leave the school. They get a job at McDonald’s or whatever, there will be video cameras monitoring them.
Bostondreams
@Kent: Supposedly parents can’t view the video unless their child was the victim or perpetrator. The bill theoretically only applies in instances of abuse or neglect. We will see.
Kay
This drives me crazy because it’s just a theory and it rests entirely on their good faith intention to make a deal. Because it’s a wildly popular theory doesn’t mean it’s any more valid than my theory, which is that they’re blocking BBB because BBB involves repealing some of the Trump tax cuts, and they want to keep the Trump tax cuts.
My theory makes more sense, because they did not, in fact, make a deal. All of their actions indicate “no deal” is preferable to them than “a deal”, so why don’t they want a deal? Because they can’t get one without some or all of the tax cuts they want to preserve reversed. That’s the only consistent must-have ingredient in any deal.
RufusK
McMinn County: The Battle of Athens – in 1946, WW2 GI veterans went to war against the county because of abusive county rule. I wonder how they would feel?
In 1990, a 99-car accident in the county (due to fog) killed 12 people.
Seems like a nice place.
[actually, I suspect the GIs would not really care — the county sheriff was hassling the GIs (and others) for drinking and ticketing and jailing them in a money-raising scheme]
germy
And I thought she was supposed to be one of those rare “good” republicans I keep reading about ?
HinTN
This is the same place that conducted the Scopes trial, if that tells you anything.
Kay
So in a normal negotiation one would include this possibility- they don’t want a deal- and then look at the pieces that can be taken out of the deal and the pieces that can’t. It’s the pieces that can’t be taken out that matter, because that’s where you find out whether the (real) objection is fatal.
There’s only one piece in BBB that can’t be taken out, and it’s the repeal the tax cuts piece.
Matt McIrvin
@germy: President Nancy Pelosi!
Baud
@germy:
She is a good Republican. She’s civil to Village insiders in her conversations with them. That’s all it takes.
Just One More Canuck
My daughter got a copy of Maus last year (she was 16) and I read it after she was done. It’s really well done, giving a really personal perspective to the Holocaust. To ban it, especially for the reasons they gave, might be one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard of. Why are school boards filled with such hateful busybodies?
Mike in NC
@germy: Take it from somebody who lives next door to South Carolina: Nikki Haley is a terrible person with no redeeming value.
Hungry Joe
Would “Maus” upset kids? Damn right it would. It tore me up, and I read it when I was in my forties.
They’re in school to learn stuff. And sometimes stuff is upsetting. I’d be more worried about any kid who WASN’T upset by”Maus.”
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@germy:
I suspect that Darling Nikki has been using The American Conservative as her magazine….
Mike in NC
@Just One More Canuck: Loading local school boards with bigots is one of the Heritage Foundation’s primary missions.
Baud
@Mike in NC:
For people who believe in the value of government, we tend to do a piss poor job of actually supporting the folks who actually do the work of government.
Geminid
@Just One More Canuck: Xeni Jardin (@Xeni) was tweeting last night about the copy of Maus she had when she was 16. That was right after the book came out in 1986. Jardin says that Graphic novels were starting to take off then, and Maus was a big hit among her Punk crowd.
Brachiator
@Just One More Canuck:
I know people who will only watch movies with happy endings. Others insist that social media should only consist of pictures of happy dogs and kittens.
On a local talk radio station I recently heard one of the hosts object to history about racism, sexism, etc, because he did not want his daughter to feel bad. History should only be about how America is the greatest, sweetest nation ever. And guns.
But it is not just about “please, think of the children.” A lot of conservative white people want to live in a fantasy land. And they are willing to force everyone else to pretend to live in that land, as well.
Miss Bianca
@germy: “Recreational sexualization”?
Would it be bad of me to say, “What do you mean by this, Senator? Can you give us some examples? Be specific.”
Kay
@Just One More Canuck:
Some of the discussion was odd because it centered around whether they “need” the book. There are other books about the Holocaust is the point, I’m assuming. I just haven’t seen the whole “do we need the book?” discussion before. If this is the measure we’re in real trouble.
Baud
Disney should make a holocaust movie.
marcopolo
Well, I’m just hoping, ala the Streisand effect, that a lot more folks will wind up reading Maus because of this. I’ve seen tweets by various people offering to mail anyone who lives in McMinn County a free copy if they want it. Also, now that this has happened in the school district I’m curious to see if there are any ramifications for the local public library–I’d have to think that they have copies (or ways to access them for patrons) of the book.
Brachiator
@germy:
This is crazy talk. The Republicans have lost their minds.
And these are the fools who thought that Trump had foreign policy abilities.
Brachiator
@Baud:
They did. It’s called Bambi
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
And about 10x as much as usual over the past year or so, as the anti-CRT bit has morphed into a more all-encompassing rage over the schools, complete with getting kids to report anything their teachers say that might chafe their fundie white asses.
That one county in Tennessee is, of course, just one for-instance out of many.
burnspbesq
@ian:
Issues for you, maybe. Not issues for the folks proposing it.
lowtechcyclist
I pulled my old copy off the shelf last night and started re-reading it.
Funny thing is, on account of the kiddo’s having to read Elie Weisel’s Night for one of his high-school classes earlier this month, I just re-read that so I could discuss it with him if he wanted. Apparently it’s Holocaust memorial month at the lowtechcyclist house.
lowtechcyclist
I’m surprised there haven’t been walkouts yet over all this spying and censorship.
burnspbesq
Ironic that, at the same time Texas is enjoying remarkable success in attracting high-tech employers, it is dooming said employers by guaranteeing that the next generation of Texans will be too f***ing stupid to do those jobs.
Brachiator
@Kay:
When I was in middle school, I think, we read “The Diary of Anne Frank.”
There was more discussion about the human spirit than direct discussion of the Holocaust itself. But the message got through.
In high school, we watched the Alain Resnais film about the concentration camps, Night and Fog.
Bex
@Matt McIrvin: I think what she had in mind was President Nikki Haley, who became the World’s Greatest Expert on foreign policy because she was UN ambassador for five minutes.
brendancalling
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I *AM* a teacher and was considering moving back to my beloved Nashville for the 22-23 school year. Between Nashville being gerrymandered out of its power, and the increasing attacks on TN schools, I am likely going to choose Philadelphia PA instead.
Roger Moore
@burnspbesq:
My impression is that Texas is relatively successful at attracting high tech companies at around the time their technology becomes well established instead of bleeding edge. Texas isn’t the place where new ideas are made real for the first time; it’s the place where all the inefficiencies are squeezed out of the process to ensure it stays profitable as the competition moves in.
MisterDancer
When I read the meeting transcript — kinda?
The thinking seemed more to be “why do we need a book on the Holocaust with nudity and cussin’? Isn’t there a book on this topic without all that stuff that breaks community standards?”
Like I said, I don’t see in the transcript any of the stuff I’d expect for Heritage Foundation types — the ranting and raving about corrupting kids. This seems to be a too-“conservative” school board who got the (likely astro-turfed) attacks from parents on MAUS’ content, and who chose to over-react. They even had tabled the motion to ban it, and then, under circumstances that I couldn’t make out in the transcripts, brought it back for the final vote.
So yeah, like I said in my earlier comment, there wasn’t anything that jumped out at me as Holocaust denial, in what was said in that meeting. But I’m not expert on reading these kinds of tea leaves, either.
Brachiator
@marcopolo:
The crazy thing is that graphic novels, rather than text or boring lectures, is a great way to get some students interested in history.
Along with Maus, there are works like Persepolis, about growing up in Iran, and Safe Area Gorazde, about the war in Bosnia.
For some students I have recommended the various “Cartoon History of the Universe” and “Cartoon History of the United States” series.
MisterDancer
They mention using Anne Frank in the school board meeting transcript. The below is from one of the instructional supervisors who spoke at the meeting, the last sentence is the crucial one around that work:
A point is that this is all about 8th grade students, and what’s appropriate for that grade specifically (one of the Board members gets called out on confusing this point). It’s not a general ban on MAUS, ala library usage, from what I can tell.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
Makes you wonder how Texas Instruments ever got founded. Texas is a strange place. There are deep pools of ignorance, but also places where people ignore stupidity to get shit done.
There are people who have developed the art of pretending to believe fundamentalist and religious bullshit, for the sake of public propriety, but who then go on to ignore this stuff where necessary.
trollhattan
@germy:
I know what dangerous is, what’s “beyond dangerous”? Sarah Palin piloting a 747? Michael Jackson babysitting? Cool Ranch Doritos?
Brachiator
@MisterDancer:
Good points. An NBC story reported the following:
It doesn’t say whether the novel would be available in the library.
mrmoshpotato
@germy: So what Nikki is really saying is: Pelosi for President?
Matt McIrvin
@Cermet:
It actually applies in a lot of situations–it’s just that when people use it, they’re very often advocating the exact opposite of what is good for the children.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
I think TI was founded long enough ago that the current way of doing things hadn’t been established. What’s really remarkable is the extent to which there are really now a handful of places where the vast majority of high-tech companies get started. It might be a crude way of saying it, but high-tech companies tend to be founded in California and move to Texas when it’s more important to reduce costs than have the best access to venture capital and workers eager to work for a start-up.
Matt McIrvin
@Bex: A couple of days ago I was wondering if the political situation was dire enough that the Republicans could actually reinstall Trump as President in 2023, through the conservative fantasy route that there’s been some buzz about: first appoint Trump as Speaker of the House (there’s no rule in the constitution that says
a mule can’t be a placekickerthe Speaker has to be a member), then simultaneously impeach and convict Biden and Harris to put him in the White House as third in line.But… most observers seem to think we’re nowhere near a world where they can get the required Senate supermajority to do the conviction.
trollhattan
So anyway, Arizona.
If she can JUST convince Republicans to not run somebody against her.
Lapassionara
So, today is the 77th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. I was born during WWII, and I read many books about the holocaust as a child, including books that described the Nazis loading people into box cars whose floors were covered in lime. I read about some dreadful things when I was young. I survived the experience, although I have a strong aversion to fascism, probably as a result of this sort of reading.
Roger Moore
@Lapassionara:
I see something in that sentence that explains exactly why the Republicans don’t want kids reading the way you did.
Just One More Canuck
@Kay: I told my daughter about this (she has a couple of days off before the next semester) and the reasons that the school board gave for doing it. She just shook her head and said that those people are insane, and that this decision says more about them than they realise
I’ve got a good kid
leeleeFL
@Jeffro: From your mouth to God’s ear, as l used to say, back when I believed He paid attention to our petty crap.
Sweet singing Moses, these assholes are absolutely driving out my last vestige of patience with assholes. I cannot even wrap my brain around the nuclear grade stupid the school boards for lies and hypocrisy display every f’ing day! That people have placed these troglodytes in power over EDUCATION!!!! scares me beyond comprehension! History is all we have to show kids the way to be, or not be. Hiding it, white-washing it, down-grading it’s strength can only lead to our destruction. Not even a whimper…just a smirk
laura
What until that cracker barrel school board finds out about the R Crumb graphic version of the Old Testament.
So my very dear friend is a Teacher Coach for a local school district- and it’s a very well funded, well supported district with about 27 languages across the student population. She’s got over 30 years of teaching and coaching, and has earned a really solid reputation for her pedagogy. She’s going out on stress leave due solely to the ongoing disruption and chaos from Covid. Multiply her by the thousands and it’s so easy to see the collapse of public education even without the full on assault by the right. The ripple effects will be everywhere.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
Your point is noted. However, Texas also has shown that they know how to do innovation.
mrmoshpotato
@Lapassionara:
Never heard that before. That’s atrocious.
StringOnAStick
All the teachers on here will agree that one thing about kids is they hate hypocracy and unfairness, and do any parents here care to opine on that? What CRT or even teaching about racism or the Holocaust do is put those issues front and center, and the kids who are these unfairness detectors gain an understanding that makes going to racist meemaa’s house for Thanksgiving something they don’t want to do anymore, especially now that racist meemaa is a full on tRumper who is letting her racist freak flag fly. That’s what all this book banning is about: their kids are so incensed about the racism that they are rejecting their parent’s and grandparent’s values, loudly (and also because it ties in AGW, which the young rightly see as an existential threat); that’s what this is all about.
Starboard Tack
@mrmoshpotato: The lime was to neutralize body fluids. Nice guys, Nazis were.
mrmoshpotato
Regarding Nikki Haley wanting Biden and Harris to resign.
mrmoshpotato
@Starboard Tack: Riiiight. ?
trollhattan
Particularly in the field of state governin’.
trollhattan
@Lapassionara: Dads in the neighborhood I grew up in either fought Nazis in Europe or Japanese in the Pacific. Relaunching Nazism while they were still alive was not going to happen. But today, sadly, they are all gone and only kids who took their stories to heart are left to push back. Hungary as the new model for “western” government and culture? Do not think so, and yet.
mrmoshpotato
@trollhattan: And power grid interconnects.
trollhattan
Least surprising news of the day, but it’s early.
spotmarkedx
I’m many years removed from this, but I remember running across Maus in my high school library. Lured in by the promise of a comic book (a comic book!) in the high school, I checked it out and read it that day. It was I’d come across a train wreck – I couldn’t stop reading it for the growing horror as I read about one person’s story through these times.
More than any of my history classes, Maus I and II really drove home the reality of the Holocaust. The cute pictures of animal people drew me in and let me get through the story and drew in my curious self, but every so often, the author returned to telling his own story, including an insert of his attempts to come to terms with his mother’s suicide from a number of years prior (so in a more realistic form – this may be the origin of the “oh my god, naked people!” complaint), and the inclusion of a literal photo of his father in his prison uniform reminding you at the end, once again, that this is a very real story that is being told.
Maus was extremely important for my growing up self in connecting the history lessons with a human story that was so real and raw that it was probably only readable by divorcing it from reality a little bit by adding animal people in.
In conclusion, I’ve come out of lurking to say fuck this school board for removing this opportunity for others.
WaterGirl
@spotmarkedx: What you had to say was important, and I’m glad you did!
Your first comment had to be approved manually, but now that that’s been approved, your comments will be visible to everyone as soon as you post them.
Subsole
@Kay: Betcha a hundred dollars these people go home and cry about Millennials and their gawdamn participation trophies…
louc
The utterly ridiculous thing is the “nude” picture was of Maus drawing a picture of his mother committing suicide in a bathtub. So you’d have to have a magnifying glass to see the titties.
And the bad words are things like goddamn and bitch.
Another important point: they voted to kick Maus out *and* to temporarily stop the ELA lesson unit on the Holocaust since Maus was the foundational text for the unit. All because a Pulitzer Prize winning graphic novel had a few bad words and had a drawing of a naked woman (committing suicide in a bathtub).
If you read the transcript, the staff chose Maus because it was recommended by the US Holocaust museum for sixth grade and higher.
So what happens when kids learn about the Renaissance and see pictures of Michelangelo works of art? They going to put a fig leaf on Adam’s and David’s penises?
Subsole
@Mike in NC:
Would have been nice if the bug hrains of American reportage made that incisive connection back before the election…
Citizen Alan
@MisterDancer:
I would consider suicide preferable to moving back to Mississippi.
Subsole
@Kay:
They’ll care when the proper kind of white people start dying.
For a week.
Then back to both sides.
@Kay: This is all so they can break public schools and replace them with religious, for-profit indoctrination camps.
Lapassionara
@mrmoshpotato: as I understand it, this was one of the early crude methods used to rid the continent of its Jewish inhabitants. They found more efficient disposal methods later.
reason number gazillion why I will never vote for a Republican.
Never forget!
Lapassionara
@trollhattan: Not to mention Russia.
NotMax
@Brachiator
Emphasis on the “no.”
Central Planning
Since it’s an open thread, the following was in the local Rochester paper today:
This guy sued to have the NYS mask mandate overturned. If the thinks he has natural immunity, how did he get COVID twice? And I don’t think he’s even tried exercising with a mask on. SMDH.
Subsole
@trollhattan:
@gvg: Seconding this. I knew a few people who called it The War Between the States. Never heard the phrase “Northern Aggression”.
They definitely skimmed over the gritty details of the whys and wherefores behind The Late Unpleasantness, though. So yeah, the books were kinda accurate, but so what? Nobody read ’em.
Again. It would be so nice to live in a country where every history teacher’s first name isn’t ‘Coach’.
Starboard Tack
@trollhattan: Also the fathers in my small town. My boy scout troup marched to the local cemetery every Memorial Day behind the VFW color guard. Those guys weren’t real liberal but they had no truck with Nazis.
James E Powell
@trollhattan:
Republican approval of Sinema is based entirely on the fact that she is causing problems for the people Republicans hate. It does not mean they will ever vote for her instead of a Republican.
Baud
@louc:
Ask John Ashcroft!
NotMax
@Subsole
As a one-time high school history teacher in the long ago must pipe up that I in no way resemble that remark.
;)
lowtechcyclist
Just the Book of Genesis, actually (I own a copy, and it’s become my preferred way of reading Genesis), but if the brief nudity in Maus gave them conniptions, R. Crumb’s illustrated Genesis would make their heads explode. (No great loss, though.)
Starboard Tack
@Lapassionara: Hmm. I must have conflated something, maybe about cleaning the gas chambers. I knew about the gas vans that were first used to kill disabled people but not rail cars except for transport.
Citizen Alan
@louc: The last year I was a high school music teacher before I said fuck this shit and went to law school, we had gotten new books for a music appreciation class And there was a single small picture inside of Michael Angelo’s David in the chapter on Renaissance music. And I was instructed by the principal to go through and cover up his junk on every page with a magic marker
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@lowtechcyclist: I remembered that this was an Oklahoma Congresscritter, but I would’ve sworn it was Ernie Istook, which name autocorrect wants to change to Ernie Mistook
LongHairedWeirdo
Anyone ever thought of some messaging? I had one.
“Democrats want you to choose to go to work, so you get money and other nice things; Republicans have a different view; they think people need to be afraid of what they’ll lose, the instant they can’t work.
So, two ideas, reward for working, or safety from bad consequences.. Two motivations. Which one works best? Well, *obviously*, Republicans would never trouble the well-off, and besides, they already have a bit of money! No, their beliefs are for working poor only – no surprises there, of course.
So Democrats try to think of motivations for work, like a higher minimum wage. Yes, I know, but the Republicans don’t really believe it kills jobs; they’re not that honest, but they aren’t totally stupid., For example, they don’t like admitting their self defense laws mean any killer with a moment of fear has a License To Kill. So they call it “stand your ground”, not “look for a reasons to kill people.” It’s amazing how many brave gun owners are so scared they probably need two guns to go to the bathroom, and don’t forget the derringer they may well have shoved… into a hiding place.
Now, obviously you can’t trust just me on this, but it strikes me that people who want people to work and earn good things, we could call that the Freedom Principle. What would we call a principle held by a bunch of people, some of whom still think slavery wasn’t that bad, and think all work comes from making working poor people avoid suffering.
Let’s see, freedom, work for good things, but who works only to avoid punishment? And besides, these days, if you say “slavery”, you’d had better include a trigger warning, a safe space, and maybe some warm milk to comfort the those afflicted by race discussion cooties.
Well, in any case, I’d never attribute the Freedom principle to liberals, and the, you know, I’d hate to escalate. And do you really thing those mature, respectable MAGA folks would really accuse us liberals (and other loving people) of *slavery* would they?. Oh come on now! Those nice MAGA people and their Brandoners would never be so rude, so vulgar, so divisive!
Oh, wait, they cut unemployment benefits to choose employees choose, health or work. ‘Kay, freedom principle for Dems, slavery principle for Repubs.
Subsole
@NotMax:
No offense to coaches. And I get people are stretched thin and have to double up.
I just think it is absurd that we hire chemistry teachers to teach chemistry and english teachers to teach english. In every field we seem to hire specialists in that field – except history.
Subsole
@Citizen Alan:
It makes sense these people are scared of sex. They’re scared of everything else…
NotMax
@Subsole
In the high school I attended the Latin teachers (there were two!) doubled up to teach driver’s ed.
CarolPW
I was born in 1950. The first nude adults I ever saw was in photos of victims of the holocaust. Piles of murdered nude people (children and adults), trenches of murdered people both nude and clothed, and murdered people scattered across fields often with their clothes in disarray.The photos were in documentary movies and film strips we were shown in class around fifth or sixth grade in my rural school district. They were not tiny drawings of a nude woman who committed suicide in a bathtub, they were multitudes of nude men and women shown full-screen slaughtered either by gassing or by being shot.
These people either have very low opinions about the mental capabilities of their children or they do not want their children to learn how utterly horrific the holocaust actually was. Fuck them.
trollhattan
@Subsole:
Sheer coincidence that a fellow I worked with grew up in Tennessee and said that’s exactly how his classes were taught the Civil War. At the time I found it quaint, in an “oh, those hillbillies” way. Not considering the hillbillies might at some point be in charge.
NotMax
@CarolPW
If memory serves it was Eisenhower who issued an order directing the troops entering the camps to photograph or film “everything” they possibly could, at the time expressing the rationale that in the future some people would deny or otherwise discount what took place.
Brachiator
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I don’t know. The Holocaust was pretty indecent.
emmyelle
In 1974, my second grade teacher had us watch The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. In school. Maybe 30 minutes, maybe an hour a day, for as long as it took. And we talked about it. N-word, a massacre that resulted in the violent death of a bunch of people including an infant, hangings, Klansmen, eery single thing you needed to tell the story of a (fictional) woman who was born a slave and lived to see the Civil Rights Movement.
And we talked about it. We talked about babies being murdered and men being hanged and shot and white people burning down black people’s houses if they found out that the black people knew how to read.
I’m pretty sure that my wonderful awesome favoritest teacher ever would be fired today if she tried that.
Subsole
@marcopolo:
I can think of no better way to get kids to read something than to make them realize it will piss off the grown ups who run their lives.
J R in WV
The wonderful Austrian woman who does our tax math every year was in Europe during the era after the end of WW II. Her mother’s family had orchards, and made wine, had hundreds of thousands of bottles ageing in cellars when the Nazis took over Austria. They took her family’s wine, spilling most of it on the floors of the cellars, destroyed the orchards and vineyards. She was lucky to survive to escape to America as a young teen.
I mentioned my father’s family’s trip to Europe in 1938 after dropping off some paperwork, which unexpectedly triggered her telling me her much less happy story of that era. Nazis are worse than animals, less than alligators who kill to eat, I have trouble understand how Americans who went to the same schools I attended aren’t as repulsed by fascism as I am. I guess monsters are born in every generation.
I’m going to stop reading political stuff and return to my SF/fantasy reading. And fixing the salmon for dinner.