You’ve got your five-star hotels, four-star generals and three-star restaurants. Then there’s Texas, your Lone Star state — and it’s no wonder.
Here, from the Houston Chronicle by way of Think Progress, is the latest evidence Texas doesn’t deserve the one star it’s got.
The first draft for proposed standards in United States History Studies Since Reconstruction says students should be expected “to identify significant conservative advocacy organizations and individuals, such as Newt Gingrich, Phyllis Schlafly and the Moral Majority.” [...] Others have proposed adding talk show host Rush Limbaugh and the National Rifle Association.
Oh hell, y’all, what about Ann Coulter, Michael Savage and those conservative intellectual giants, Glenn Beck and Joe “The Plumber” Wuerzelbacher?
How about including that economic and financial genius, Texan Phil Gramm. After all, his prowess at destroying federal safeguards and sneaking language into a bill during the dark of night did so much to bring down the U.S. and world economies.
You’ll surely want to include conservative icon Ronald Reagan, who did his bit for racial harmony by kicking off his 1980 presidential campaign in the city where years before three civil rights volunteers were murdered. Be sure to also tell students about Strom Thurmond, who only wanted mixing of the races in his own bed — and got it.
And don’t tell me you’re not going to devote at least a chapter of your new history textbook to those paragons of moral rectitude, family values and Christian virtue, David Vitter, John Ensign, Larry “Widestance” Craig and Mark Sanford. Oh, and your heroes Gingrich and Limbaugh deserve at least a page each. But no illustrations, please, since your students are nearly all under 18.
Levity aside, this ludicrous move is hardly surprising, coming as it does from rabid ideologues cast from the same mold as those who subverted the Justice Department in a quest for more power, control and political gain. They disdain science, so why should they be expected to respect history?
For that matter, since Texas conservative Republicans are privileged political characters, why should they be expected to honor a long tradition of demanding that school textbooks be politically neutral?
This disgusting gambit is all the more reason no one should stand in Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s way, if he wants his state to secede from the Union.
Vaya con locos, Texans. Just be prepared to say adios to billions in federal aid, to military installations and to more political clout than any backwater full of Gramms, Armeys, Bushes, DeLays and Roves should ever get to have.
Ok, putting that stuff in textbooks is just totally nuttery bonkers.
That said, I have to wonder if someone really is putting crazy juice in the water supplies. They’ve always been a bit wacked in texas, but lately they keep rising to new heights of wackadoo.
I would love to see them secede – the drug lords on the border would take over the entire state within a month. I have to admit it would be rather gratifying to see them come slobbering back with tails between legs asking for military assistance getting those heads off the pikes outside the State Capital building.
The wingnuts will be delighted to know that watergate is not in high school history books. No mention of it at all.
The poor high school kids will be in for a shock if they are fortunate to go to a top Texas university for further education. Their professors will be pulling tufts of hair out, trying to explain to these indoctrinated individuals that: “No, Newt Gingrich is not the greatest American of all time . . . Richard Nixon was a crook . . Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh are celebrities, NOT philosophers . ..”
We wonder why things don’t improve, those wackos keep poisoning the stream.
Bee, I’ve wondered if it’s the water, the Lone Star beer, or some other tainted thing that warps so many in Texas. I don’t like to dump on a whole state. But considering the political idiocy, lowlifes and skulduggery coming out of there in recent decades, it’s hard not to.
Demeur, I expect the wingnuts are why there’s no mention of Watergate in textbooks. The kids who happen to know Nixon resigned probably guess he wanted to spend more time with his family or mistress. Oh well, in a country with a hollowed out economy whose major exports are jobs and debt, why bother to educate the young completely and well? They can go fight oil wars in the Mideast and be motel maids and pizza deliverers with a hollowed-out grade school education.
Holte, imagine being 19 and hearing for the first time that Ronald Reagan wasn’t really the father of our country.
America was founded by a brave band of clean-cut men wearing Brooks Brothers suits and carrying briefcases. When they first arrived here, they were nice to the primitive natives who were already here. But there weren’t very many of them and soon they all died of natural causes.
Anyway, that’s part of my first draft. I’m working on a submission to the Texas Board of Education.
Tom, LOL, that’s good. Be sure to include how swell it was of the cavalry to relocate many natives — so the railroads wouldn’t terrorize or run them over.
Come on guys, we Democrats in the south have a hard enough time without you guys painting us all with the same toilet brush. Remember Ann Richards, Lyndon Johnson, Molly Ivins, John Lewis, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, Lloyd Bentsen, etc.
The geniuses who came up with the “first draft” mentioned above deserve your derision, but we ain’t all idgits!
On another topic: I’ve always wondered about Craig’s “wide stance” from a linguistic angle. Could he have meant “wide sitz”?
Terrell, I feel great empathy for southern Democrats. I know what it’s like. I’m in the red half of a blue state. My congresswoman is easily ID’d by the moss growing on her north side, the RNC talking points memo she’s reading from, and the tin-soldier shuffle she does in close-order drill with her GOP colleagues.
As I’m sure you realize, though, LBJ, Ivins, Carter and the rest were then. Bad news boors such as Perry, Rove, Cornyn, Chambliss, Sessions, Shelby, Vitter, Coburn, DeMint, etc., are here and now.
Re: “wide sitz,” LOL, I so don’t want to know.
Didn’t Nixon resign his presidency so he could run for governor of Alaska? You know, to help the country.
At moments of personal craziness I wonder whether this move to deify the wackiest of conservatives has the useful benefit of taking the focus off Texan’s efforts to make sure that good evolutionary science is “balanced” with absurd creationist tracts in science classes.
Those conservatives: so clever when we think it can get any crazier.
Jeff, that’s both a novel and plausible possibility. Or, maybe it’s being put out there to distract from the craziness of what Perry said about seceding, since he’s running for re-election.