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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Friday Evening Open Thread: The Perils of Home-Schooling for A Young Politico

Friday Evening Open Thread: The Perils of Home-Schooling for A Young Politico

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Madison Cawthorn’s parents chose to homeschool him through high school, no doubt for excellent reasons, but their decision had specific consequences for young Madison. Yes, he has retained the vivid imagination of a ‘creative’ nine-year-old untrammeled by tedious rote learning — Left me to die in the flaming wreckage!… Congressional orgies with key[lo?]s of cocaine!

On the other hand, he seems to have missed certain useful lessons in what modern educationalists call ‘social-emotional learning’ and the old-fashioned cynics ‘getting some sense knocked into him’.

Apparently he made some good friends while playing on a high-school football team set up for home-schoolers. That these friends are now his closest advisors in his Congressional office is perhaps more of a problem than if he had taken the predictable career path to junior manager at one of his dad’s car dealerships. I had teenage brothers, I understand that among young men ‘playfully’ grabbing at each others’ groins and trading what they imagine to be gay slurs is considered a harmless form of bonding… but *not* in front of the paying customers, kids!

It must be even more wearying for the Republican gerontocratic lifers and striving hustlers to bear with Cawthorn than it is for his Democratic colleagues (who can at least point & laugh). Little wonder, given their own habits and proclivities, if receipts have been stored to enliven a steady drip of tabloid Shocking Revelations at the first opportunity…

Reader Interactions

78Comments

  1. 1.

    Ohio Mom

    Well, the top banana, Trump, gets away with breaking the law all the time. But he doesn’t do this penny ante stuff that’s easy to prove like driving without a license.

    His dad is probably glad he’s not screwing up at the car dealership and running it into the ground.

  5. 5.

    Primer Gray (formerly Yet Another Jeff

    Why the hell aren’t more of them facing Nights of the Long Sporks?

  6. 6.

    SiubhanDuinne

    There’s a paragraph in young Mad’s Wikipedia entry that I never tire of reading:

    During the fall 2016 semester, Cawthorn attended Patrick Henry College, studying political science, but earned mostly D grades and dropped out. He said his grades were low primarily because his injuries had interfered with his ability to learn. Cawthorn said in a deposition, “You know, suffering from a brain injury after the accident definitely I think it slowed my brain down a little bit. Made me less intelligent. And the pain also made reading and studying very difficult.” He also said he withdrew due to “heartbreak” after his fiancée broke up with him.

    My bolding.

  8. 8.

    Ruckus ??

    @Jerzy Russian:

    Christ, what an asshole!

    This is worth repeating.

    First, did anyone on their side of the aisle do any checking whatsoever about the person they were nominating? If they did, this guy was OK?

    Second, he’s a major asshole and got elected to congress. I’d say that rethuglicans either have pretty shitty values, (YES, I believe they do!) or they really, really are as shitty as we think they are.

    I’m going with C, both of the above.

  10. 10.

    CaseyL

    Of course they all have files on one another. Remember when Wikileaks published all the dirt they’d dug up on Democrats, but not what they’d dug up on the GOP?   That’s been kept back to keep the members in line.  It does make you wonder what’s in there, considering the staggering array of corruption and evil we do know about.

    And of course Trump’s myrmidons were also spying on everyone, collecting new information.

  12. 12.

    Mike in NC

    Imbecile voters in NC-11 chose this cretin and dropout over a retired Air Force colonel. Imagine that!

  13. 13.

    bbleh

    @Ohio Mom:  What I think some people fail to understand is, for all their rhetoric, modern Republicans don’t care about the “rule of law.”  This sort of behavior might be seen as too hypocritical to ignore, or as a wedge issue for Republican voters, but they don’t care.

    In fact, it’s even worse: they celebrate it. They see defiance of law (by a Republican man) as heroic, as strong, as a sign they “won’t be bossed around.”  It’s good that Cawthorne has “pushed back” against these silly “laws” and “regulations,” because something something rights something big-gummint-bureaucrats something something.  And ditto Trump and tax laws, sexual harassment laws, etc.  These are strong men fighting back against people tryin’ to keep them down.

    Tillis is appealing to the Olds.  There may still be enough of them.  But in the modern Republican party, they’re a fading force.

  14. 14.

    Roger Moore

    @Primer Gray (formerly Yet Another Jeff:

    Why the hell aren’t more of them facing Nights of the Long Sporks?

    Because they have been good team players.  That’s the basic thing: if you’re a team player, you can get away with just about anything.  The rest of the team will cover for you.  It’s only if you don’t play along that you get in trouble.  Cawthorn isn’t in trouble for the stuff that’s come out about him.  He’s in trouble because he said things that made other Republicans look bad.

  15. 15.

    zhena gogolia

    @Ruckus ??:
    This is who he defeated:

    Morris Durham “Moe” Davis (born July 31, 1958) is an American retired U.S. Air Force colonel, attorney, educator, politician, and former administrative law judge.

    Davis was appointed the third Chief Prosecutor of the Guantanamo military commissions, where he served from September 2005 until October 2007.[1] He also served as director of the Air Force Judiciary.[2] He resigned from the position after he refused to use evidence obtained through torture and because of political influence and pressure in prosecutions. He retired from active duty in October 2008.

    In 2019, he officially announced his candidacy to replace U.S. Congressman Mark Meadows, in the United States House of Representatives after Meadows resigned to serve as White House Chief of Staff.[3] On March 3, 2020, Davis won the Democratic primary for North Carolina’s 11th congressional district with 52,665 votes.[4][5] He lost to Madison Cawthorn in his election bid to the House of Representatives in the 2020 general election.

  18. 18.

    Roger Moore

    @CaseyL:

    It does make you wonder what’s in there, considering the staggering array of corruption and evil we do know about.

    It isn’t what’s in there vs. what’s publicly known that matters.  What matters is that Republicans in good standing will cover for each other, and that makes it really hard to do anything about them.  This stuff coming out isn’t what will do Cawthorn in; it’s just a symbol of it.  What really matters is that he’s lost his good standing, and his fellow Republicans will no longer cover for him.  He could easily survive all this and more with their help, but he isn’t going to get it.

  19. 19.

    Geminid

    @SiubhanDuinne: Cawthorne’s  election is an example of the Republican radical base slipping the reins of the party establishment. In the 2020 primary Cawthorne finished second to real estate agent Linda Bennet. Bennet had the endorsement of both Trump and Mark Meadows, the previous Cingressman, but she did not reach the required 30% so there was a runoff. Cawthorne falsely accused Bennet of being a “Never Trumper” and won the runoff easily.

  21. 21.

    Sure Lurkalot

    Jamelle Bouie starting to come around to my thinking in the last thread that the cocaine orgies may just be the straw:

    @jbouie they are coming down so hard on this guy that i half wonder if the cocaine orgies are real

  22. 22.

    Almost Retired

    “Madison Cawthorne” is such a fakey-sounding soap opera name.   Like the new character who rolls his wheelchair into Port Charles to blackmail the Quartermains.

  25. 25.

    Primer Gray (formerly Yet Another Jeff)

    I mean, it’s like a combination of Lord of the Flies and Eyes Wide Shut….

  26. 26.

    Starfish

    This is a place where I think people underestimate Southern folks. Getting caught with guns in the airport overshadows the news dump from the other day with the police stop and the being drunk with the friends on the cruise ship. It also increases your popularity with the single issue gun voters.

    “I think I will go get ‘caught’ with a gun in the airport to gain some cred with the gun nuts in my district” is not the dumbest thing a person has ever done.

  27. 27.

    Ishiyama

    @Almost Retired: “Madison Cawthorne” is such a fakey-sounding soap opera name. Like the new character who rolls his her wheelchair into Port Charles to blackmail the Quartermains.

    I always thought it was a girl’s first name, anyhoo.

  29. 29.

    Kent

    @Almost Retired:“Madison Cawthorne” is such a fakey-sounding soap opera name.   Like the new character who rolls his wheelchair into Port Charles to blackmail the Quartermains.

    It is a perfect gay porn name frankly.

  30. 30.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Almost Retired: Dear god, are there still Quartermains in Port Charles ?

    I haven’t watched since the Luke and Laura days, when Demi Moore was “Jackie Templeton.”

  31. 31.

    Kent

    Teacher here.

    I teach in Vancouver WA which is suburban Portland but the outer edges are littered with nests of fundies who are into homeschooling.  WA law is very flexible in that regard and you can basically just send your kid to school for one or two classes or sports/music and then homeschool the rest.

    So from time to time I get the occasional student who shows up just for chemistry.  Since that is a pretty difficult subject to homeschool and most parents aren’t equipped to teach actual chemistry.  Generally speaking the sense of entitlement is breathtaking.  Especially in the guys.  They all seem to be indoctrinated into believing that they are “God’s little gifts” and that the rest of the school is a disaster or something.  I put up with them because I have to.  But I don’t cut them any slack when they want to miss class for this or that homeschool thing.

    I can totally see the Madison Cawthorn thing.  I have had asshole fundie kids just like him.

  32. 32.

    CliosFanBoy

    I know a bit about that NC district. My folks retired to Hendersonville in the midst of that district many years ago. Used to go there all the time.  It’s really heavy in retirees: 98% (my guess) white.  There was a Black-owned brewery named “Black Star” a few years ago that got driven out by the local racists. That was sad, but not a surprise. Whenever we’d go down there we’d notice how segregated everything was.  We’d go to a restaurant and all the customers, and all the visible staff would be white (we’d catch a glimpse of a few people of color in the kitchen)

    Once my Mom died in 2020 my wife and I swore we’d never, ever go back for any reason.  I’m not surprised they’d elect an asshole with an R after his name over a much better qualified Democrat. Jesus himself wouldn’t get their votes if he ran as a Democrat there.

    As for my Mom, I suspect she was the only person in her nursing home who voted D with the exception of the non-White nurses and aides.

  33. 33.

    Starfish

    @Kent: Some people move to Oregon because it has some of the most lax homeschooling laws. The case where this couple drove off a cliff with their six adopted children was related to Oregon homeschoolers.

  36. 36.

    NotMax

    This week: “Exuberant youthful hijinks.”

    Next week: “To the best of my recollection I never swallowed.”

    //

  38. 38.

    Kay

    My first year of law school one of the professors asked us to name our high school mascots, as an ice breaker I suppose. When it got to a student sitting next me to he said “I was homeschooled” and the whole room got quiet- it was unusual at that point. The professor recovered from this unexpected response and said something like “good for you!” and moved on. I got to know the student later. His parents had divorced when he was really young and his mother became a fundie after the divorce. She insisted on homeschooling him although he was miserable with it and wanted to go to school. Very nice guy.

    He became a prosecutor and is fair and honest and at ease with the defendants- not nasty or cynical. So a happy ending :)

  39. 39.

    Kent

    @Starfish:@Kent: Some people move to Oregon because it has some of the most lax homeschooling laws. The case where this couple drove off a cliff with their six adopted children was related to Oregon homeschoolers.

    Actually they were most recently from Woodland, Washington just up the road from me.  Which is where they fled to in 2017 when the Oregon child welfare authorities started sniffing around:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hart_family_murders

  41. 41.

    Elizabelle

    @Kent:  I remember that case.  What a horror show.  And how the social workers/child services realized what they might be dealing with.  But the mothers knew they could just keep moving.  Plus, isolation of the children.

  42. 42.

    Ruckus ??

    @Elizabelle:

    This is, rather unfortunately true, they are pathologies.

    Pathologies: And they hit both of the segments.

    “mental, social, or linguistic abnormality or malfunction”

  43. 43.

    JPL

    twitter tells me that FOX is all abuzz because of pictures of Lou Dobbs and Laura Ingraham.   That’s more that I can handle today

    If so, will she use the I was only twenty excuse also?

  44. 44.

    brendancalling

    @Sure Lurkalot: of course they’re real. This is the party of Matt Gaetz, Marge Green, Erik and Don Jr., and Roger Stone. Did you not see Kim Guilfoyle’s insane “THE BEST IS YET TO COME!!!!!” shitshow? These folks are up to their eyeballs in Peruvian marching powder!

    I’m not talking the likes of Ron Johnson or even Gym Jordan (who is repulsive), but it’s as clear as MadClaw in lingerie that there’s a clique of (usually) younger GOP políticos who are up to their eyeballs in drugs and not-so-Christian sexual shenanigans. Wait til all the Gaetz stuff comes out…

  45. 45.

    West of the Rockies

    This is great, but I hope it is soon Gaetz, Greene and Jordan facing a political (or otherwise) extinction event.

  49. 49.

    zhena gogolia

    @MagdaInBlack: I spent the summer of 1983 on my back on the floor watching TV because of sciatica. I picked out Demi Moore from General Hospital, Meg Ryan from As the World Turns, and Margaret Colin from As the World Turns for future stardom. I didn’t really like Moore or Ryan but I thought they had “it.” Colin I liked. She’s had a respectable career, but nothing like Moore’s or Ryan’s (at least for a while).

    I also picked Tom Hanks for stardom based on Bosom Buddies.

  54. 54.

    Jeffro

    @Roger Moore:Because they have been good team players.  That’s the basic thing: if you’re a team player, you can get away with just about anything.  The rest of the team will cover for you.

    Yup.

    See also:“There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” McCarthy (R-Calif.) said, according to a recording of the June 15, 2016, exchange, which was listened to and verified by The Washington Post.

    Some of the lawmakers laughed at McCarthy’s comment. Then McCarthy quickly added: “Swear to God.”

    Ryan instructed his Republican lieutenants to keep the conversation private, saying: “No leaks. . . . This is how we know we’re a real family here.”

  56. 56.

    Spanky

    @zhena gogolia:

    Bosom Buddies had excellent writers trapped in a formulaic sitcom. Peter Scolari and Hanks had little room to play, but made the most of it.

  58. 58.

    TonyG

    “Madison Cawthorn”.  That’s a fake name if I ever heard one.  I think that “Madison Cawthorn” is one of the minor characters in “Gravity’s Rainbow”  — (an aquaintance of Tyrone Slothrop?).   I’ll have to check.

  59. 59.

    Martin

    Let’s be clear. Madison Cawthorne is the objective ideal of conservative culture, but the GOP is fucking terrified of the actual monster that culture produces.

  61. 61.

    TonyG

    @Booger: Damn, you’re right.  Madison is his middle name.  Aside from rappers and long-deceased blues musicians, who walks around with a fake name like that?  What a pompous ass.

  62. 62.

    different-church-lady

    Madison Cawthorn’s parents chose to homeschool him through high school, no doubt for excellent reasons

    Yeah, they didn’t want to let the other kids kick the crap out of him on a daily basis.

  66. 66.

    NotMax

    Trevor Lee (R – Bigot Junction).

    Near the end of the conversation, Lee also said “crazy white liberals who do not have another purpose in life” needed to stop pushing a radical agenda and find something else to do, like “start families and make babies.” He then suggested that the group would be among those sacrificed if some cataclysmic event happened.

    “If the crap hits the fan, they’re going to be the first ones to get thrown to the wayside. They’re the ones who, if they really need to get something done, they need to eliminate people. They’ll be two-thirds of the first ones to go,” Lee said.

    Sickening member of the species.

  67. 67.

    Ella in New Mexico

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    During the fall 2016 semester, Cawthorn attended Patrick Henry College, studying political science, but earned mostly D grades and dropped out. He said his grades were low primarily because his injuries had interfered with his ability to learn. Cawthorn said in a deposition, “You know, suffering from a brain injury after the accident definitely I think it slowed my brain down a little bit. Made me less intelligent. And the pain also made reading and studying very difficult.” He also said he withdrew due to “heartbreak” after his fiancée broke up with him.

    Pampered, spoiled kid whose parents protected him from real world consequences so now he has a probable TBI that impairs his judgement and makes him impulsive and driven to sociopathy.

    But after they footed the bill to make him a Congressperson now the rest of the world coddles and protects him from consequences as well.

    I wonder why TSA hasn’t looked into why he was given special treatment not once but twice for trying to take a gun on a plane?

    Does anyone think if he was anyone else–particularly of a darker complexion–he’d NOT be in jail right now?

  68. 68.

    Marshall Eubanks

    I have to wonder how much of the craziness we are enduring is because of home-schooling.

  69. 69.

    boatboy_srq

    it is worth talking about how the republican party seems to work on the basis of an interlocking network of mutual blackmailability between its donor network and its politicians and activists.

    This is hardly surprising. It’s how the FundiEvangelical world has operated for decades. One only has to look at how outfits like the SBC handle sexual minorities, minor scofflaws and the like: everyone toes the line officially and misbehaves in private. It props up Southern Nice™: everyone knows everyone’s business, and the key is to keep it quiet. Look at the scandals over the decades: who’s been exposed for drugs, for illicit affairs, for paying for sex, for every indiscretion in the books. There is no morality beyond the Spartan ethic of “don’t get caught.”

  70. 70.

    James E Powell

    @zhena gogolia:

    Moe Davis lost 54.5 to 42.4. America is filled to the brim with horrible people, though they are not distributed equally throughout the country.

  73. 73.

    Danielx

    Thom Tillus harrumphing about insider trading is rich – like anybody in the Republican House or Senate caucuses gives a flying fuck about insider trading.

    Also be it noted: I attended an all male Jesuit prep school back in the dark ages and I can tell you for a fact: wasn’t no such thing as playfully grabbing at other people’s essentials. I wasn’t and am not Catholic, but some of those Hibernian ball busters were confused and insecure to the point where “playful grabbing” would have been worth somebody’s life, or at least teeth and broken bones.

  74. 74.

    jonas

    @SiubhanDuinne: Cawthorn said in a deposition, “You know, suffering from a brain injury after the accident definitely I think it slowed my brain down a little bit. Made me less intelligent. And the pain also made reading and studying very difficult.”

    I thought this kind of “oh woe is me I’m having mental health struggles in college” was the kind of stuff liberal wussy-ass pansy babies pulled to get out of having to do real work. Are you telling me this totally badass alpha male is pulling some weak-ass feel-sorry-for-me shit?  For shame!

  75. 75.

    Ogliberal

    I was of the opinion that homeschooling was for crazies until we started homeschooling for a number of reasons that had nothing to do with religion and/or politics.  I’ve loved having my kids move at their own pace by subject, sometimes a bit behind where the public school would have been, often ahead.  They’re both teens now and getting a bit beyond our (well, my wife…she’s the teacher…I would be equally challenged) capabilities for stuff like calculus and physics. But there a lot of online options to choose from these days.  My son just finished a great civics class recently. (He’s almost 16 and a socialist…my wife and I are liberals but not socialists)

    I will say that finding good homeschool groups to align with is tough.  They tend to either be crazy Christians or un-schoolers.  We are absolutely neither.  Because of that you sometimes have to choose your poison.  First group was crazy Catholic.  My wife and kids are Catholic (I’m atheist) but these were not Catholics my Catholic school grad wife could recognize. (She did graduate high school with Amy Coney but a) she had no idea Coney was in a Catholic cult and b) most of the other people she graduated with were not like that) Once they caught on, things got uncomfortable.  Next group was left-leaning…but pretty snobby.  Third group was definitely wingnut but not very religious outside of a few members.  They kind of kept it out of group for several years.  But once Covid came along and Trump lost the freak flags flew.  That rules them out, especially since most of them were already anti-vaxxers and are now antimaskers as well…and our son is immunocompromised.

    So, we’re about as plain vanilla homeschooler as you get.  Guess I’m just saying that a lot of homeschoolers are wacky, but not all of them.

  76. 76.

    ...now I try to be amused

    It seems to me that parents homeschool their kids for either the best reasons or the worst, not much in between.

  77. 77.

    Princess

    The problems the homeschooled kids I taught in college had were: a) parent teachers who thought their kids were geniuses and taught them that, without ever giving them work they hated or really challenged their weaknesses, and b) problems with adult authority because mom and teacher were the same person. They tended to be emotionally immature relative to conventionally schooled kids.

  78. 78.

    docNC

    Thom Tillis:  where were you when Richard Burr made a mint from insider trading?

    Madison Cawthorn is about what you’d expect from NC-11; he’s only there because Mark Meadows got out a few steps ahead of the law.   Our representation in Congress really sucks.

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