Dear Texas: Please shut up. Sincerely, History. By Mark Morford

[madokie]

Dear Texas: Please shut up. Sincerely, History
By Mark Morford

Hey, kids! Here's something I bet you didn't know: Black people? Back in 1800 or whenever? They liked being slaves. True! Many savvy, industrious Negroes actually volunteered for that fine, desirable position. It was a completely balanced, fair, hugely successful system, until those damn liberals came along and ruined everything. I know, right? What a shame.

Do you know what else? America was wholly victorious in Vietnam. It's a fact! Kicked some serious enemy butt! Mission accomplished! Sure it was a little bumpy for awhile, but President Nixon, that great and wronged American hero, put us on the righteous path in the end, wrapped that sucker up beautifully and made America the noble Superman to the world. Hey, it's the truth! You can look it up in your history textbook!

Even more good, newly historic news: Despite what you may have heard from the liberal media, America has very much won its recent, God-sanctioned wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Angry Allah loses again! Just look at this handy diagram on page 281, Figure 4-9. See those little dark-skinned bodies stacked up neatly beside that minaret? Right next to that completely unstaged photo of the toppled Saddam statue? Look how many there are! Graphs never lie.

Did you know, back in the frontier days, that Native Americans welcomed the white man with open arms? Absolutely true. Those poor, sunburned people were so beaten down and exploited by their oppressive dictator "chiefs," they were forced to believe in all sorts of disgusting pagan sun gods and had to eat, like, rocks and snakes and stuff. ...

(click here to read the rest)

(Full URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/03/17/notes031710.DTL&nl=fix)

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

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[tanyev]

2. OK, this is now starting to annoy me.

I've seen a lot of articles and opinion pieces recently posted on DU about this and very few of them mention that this last push by the fundie freaks is them going out in a blaze of glory (see links below). Where was all this media attention years ago when they were just getting started and it could have done some real good? I'm tempted to email Morford and send him the following stories:


Texas' influence on textbooks could wane

As a giant in the textbook market, Texas and its education officials have left fingerprints on the classroom readers used far beyond the Red River.

The long reach of the State Board of Education has attracted outsized national attention for years as board members engaged in pitched battles over textbook content from evolution to the Founding Fathers.

But changes in Texas' purchasing practices, a looming budget shortfall and legislators' efforts to wean schools off hardbound textbooks could mean that Texas — and the State Board of Education — will no longer be the arbiter of content it has been in the past.

The textbooks being purchased now for language arts classes will probably mark "the end of the high-level of Texas influence as we knew it in the '70s, '80s and '90s," said David Anderson , a former director of curriculum at the Texas Education Agency and now a lobbyist whose clients include a major textbook publisher.

http://www.statesman.com/news/texas-politics/texas-influence-on-textbooks-could-wane-336909.html



Voters Spank Far Right in SBOE Elections

Voters made it clear on Tuesday that they are tired of seeing the State Board of Education threaten the future of Texas schoolchildren with unnecessary and divisive “culture war” battles over curriculum and textbooks, the president of the Texas Freedom Network said today.

TFN President Kathy Miller noted that three of five far-right social conservatives lost election contests on Tuesday. A fourth was forced into a runoff. One of the defeated candidates was Don McLeroy, whom the state Senate refused to confirm for a second term as board chair in May 2009.

“Don McLeroy was right when he said this election was a referendum on what the board has done over the past four years,” Miller said. “Voters sent a clear message by rejecting the ringleader of the faction that has repeatedly dragged our public schools into the nation’s divisive culture wars over the past four years. Parents want a state board that focuses on educating their kids, not promoting divisive political and personal agendas.”

The Republican primary between McLeroy and challenger Thomas Ratliff of Mount Pleasant had the highest profile of all the state board contests. In addition to McLeroy’s defeat in District 9, Randy Rives of Odessa lost his race against incumbent Bob Craig of Lubbock in the District 15 Republican primary, and Joan Muenzler lost her District 3 GOP primary against fellow San Antonian Tony Cunningham. Both Rives and Muenzler were backed by far-right groups such as WallBuilders and the Texas Pastor Council.

http://tfninsider.org/2010/03/03/voters-spank-far-right-in-sboe-elections/

[Berry Cool]

4. Maybe you should.

All too often, progressives in blue states end up taking easy potshots at other states based on their red-state reputation, rather than seeing the big picture. Sometimes they need a little education as to what is really going on in that state.

And yes, I'm sorry, but Californians and New Yorkers can be very guilty of this type of bicoastal snobbery. First, they act as if their whole state is very liberal and progressive when that's actually not true at all; second, they act as if every inch of every single state in the South and Midwest is red enough to bleed, which is also not true. And then they blame said states for every piece of conservative nutballism the whole country suffers from, and accuse every resident of the state of being a toothless hick rube ignoramus while they do.

Texans get tired of this, Ohioans (me, me) get tired of this (especially since Ohio turned BLUE, cough cough), and being lectured at by New Yorkers and Californians doesn't sit well with us--especially considering Prop 8 and the fact that, well, you can't get a no-fault divorce in New York, but you CAN marry your first cousin (which you can't do in Ohio).

[old mark]

3. When I was in high school, out textbooks were just as full of shit

as these seem to be. It didn't seem to hurt most of us - we mainly didn't believe most of what we were forced to "learn", and didn't much care either way.
Smarter kids will see through school sanctioned bullshit...stupid ones will remain stupid. Schools continue to be pretty much a waste of time, babysitting and social programming teaching little of any value.

mark

[lunatica]

5. The smell of this propaganda would give Joseph Goebbels orgasmic paroxysms

Who knew he would have such devoted followers of his chosen field in the good old US of A?!