I Read The News Today, Oh Boy… (5/15/16)

Try Not To Cry

Sometimes your mind and your emotions reach a point that they click ‘off’ as a sort of survival mechanism. That’s what happened to me this week as I sat at Mom’s Family Diner (41st & Mingo. Oh My-Baby-Elvis-in-a-Manger IS IT GLORIOUS!) catching up on the week’s news.

Clearly I should have been drinking something stronger than coffee. Then again, it was 6:30 in the morning.

E.W. MarlandA film about Oklahoma oil giant and later governor E.W. Marland is coming out this week. An earlier version was scrapped after the Marland Estate discovered the filmmakers had juiced up the plot a bit.

For those who don’t know, Marland had made and lost a fortune before coming to Oklahoma in the 1920s. He negotiated unheard of concessions from local tribes in order to drill, controlled 10% of the world’s oil supply for a time, built a mansion on the Oklahoma praries, brought fox-hunting and other upper-crust vanities to the plains, instituted health coverage and other worker benefits decades before anyone DID that, and then fell prey to a hostile takeover by J.P. Morgan and his financial machine, losing everything. He later came back as the Governor who brought the New Deal to Oklahoma. 

Not intriguing enough? I left out that he and his first wife adopted the son and daughter of her sister. After his wife died, Marland had the adoption of his daughter, Lydie, annulled so that he could MARRY her. It was quite the scandal. Not Kardashian enough for Hollywood, though. *sheesh*

The new one is apparently much more on target, for those of you hung up on facts and reality. Unlike, for instance…

00000klahomaOur State Legislature, which is having trouble coming up with a solution to having so much of the weird crap they pass declared unconstitutional.

No, no… they’re not going to start writing constitutionally viable legislation – don’t be stupid. They’re trying to change the process so that the current bi-partisan Judicial Nominating Committee has only a symbolic role, and the legislature itself gets to pretty much pick appellate judges across the state.

Which would be, arguably, unconstitutional. Our state constitution has this whacky idea about three branches of government, balancing one another in some convoluted way. It wouldn’t matter, though, because – well, you get the idea.

I realize the courts and all those civil liberties are a nuisance. How are we supposed to get anything done if we have to remain consistent with our founding values? Speaking of which…

Sally KernSally Kern gave her farewell speech this week. She’s term-limited, along with dozens of other current legislators. I don’t know if they all make dramatic exits, or just the most loathsome of them.

Kern wanted to make sure to emphasize one last time that gays are worse than terrorist. That the ‘gay agenda’ (also known as ‘The Bill of Rights’) has destroyed more lives than, say, Timothy McVeigh.

There are 19 undersized chairs not far from where she gave this speech representing families who might disagree.

She trotted out the usual “public schools spend all day every day trying to turn your kids into trannies” argument. No wonder they resent funding us.

I particularly liked this bit:

“The problem is we’re trying to change the definition of what sin is, when God is not changing the definition.”

That, in a nutshell, is the mindset of far too many of our elected leaders. But it’s not their job to define sin and write it into or out of law. There is no scenario in which a governmental body in the United States has any business claiming to act on God’s behalf; our legislature does it with such regularity that it hardly even registers.

I’m telling you, religious folks – it’s not doing your faith any favors to sign it over to a bunch of small-town rodeo clowns. Surely the Lord made some sort of provision for you to find your eternal way besides the legislative brilliance of Josh Brecheen or John Bennett?

Ellen on the PhoneWhile Kern & Co. are condeming the gay community in the name of the public good, one prominent lesbian was instead doing public good. Ellen DeGeneres checked in with her favorite librarian this week – Kirby Mackenzie at Union’s McAuliffe Elementary – to learn more about the slashing and burning of public ed in Oklahoma.

Yes, once again we’re making national news for something horrifying.

Ellen gave McAuliffe $25,000 to help keep their summer reading program going. Of course we know what’s really behind this – liberals and their *shiver* books. Books are worse than terrorism. 

You know the rest of the news. 

We’re cutting teachers. We’re cutting activities. We’re cutting support positions. We’re destroying what was a struggling educational system to begin with, all so we can maintain the cascading series of cuts for the wealthiest across the state – cuts which are still deepening as the pillaging and burning increase.

In case you haven’t noticed, the prosperity hasn’t yet “trickled down.” 

Don’t worry, however, that our state legislators are feeling the slightest burden or concern over the destruction they’ve wrought – because American Ninja Warrior is coming to the Capitol! 

American Ninja WarriorThank God Oklahoma is currently so prosperous and problem-free that our legislature – with very few days left in the handful they’re actually expected to work – has time for this. I’d hate for there to be any, like… issues distracting them right now.

And yes, I am hostile about it – thank you for asking. 

From The Oklahoman

The show got a free permit to use the public grounds outside the Capitol. A state tax credit will help defray some of the production costs. There are about 200 people involved in the shoot.

Sen HoltWe’re paying them to come here and shut down the Capitol for a week to use as a playground. What a comfort to all of those kids who can no longer take art, band, or athletics – at least SOMEONE still gets activities and playtime at taxpayer expense. They’re just much older.

“This brings a lot of people and a lot of investment into Oklahoma City and that’s good in itself, but I think the real value is the exposure this continues to give our city around the country,” Holt said.

I’m trying to think of a nice way to put this. A professional way. A family-friendly way. One that doesn’t start with a ‘B’ and end with an ‘ullsh*t’. 

Public education is an “investment.” Infrastructure is an “investment.” Time spent actually dealing with the issues you were elected to deal with is an “investment.”

This is a state-financed circus for legislators who’ve destroyed the economy and refuse to take the least bit of responsibility, instead shifting the fallout onto children, the elderly, and the poor, in order to maintain their groveling obeisance to their fiscal overlords. “Investment?” 

I got into a bit of a Twitter argument with Senator Holt over this. He was a bit condescending, but not everyone sees me as the lovable, provocative, voice-of-the-people type I really am.  

He insists a few shots of the Capitol in the background will make people want to vacation here and stuff. He then told me if I’d read the papers I’d see that our legislature is working plenty hard to revive the economy without doing so almost entirely at the expense of the weakest members of society.  

He and I must read different papers. 

“There’s no down side to the show being here,” said Sue Hollenbeck, director of sports business for the Oklahoma City Convention and Visitors Bureau. “It’s a family friendly, positive show. It’s about good quality competition. It’s about fitness.”

She said it even feels a little “Land Run-ish.”

“You’re running as fast as you can to get what you can.”

Did we seriously just compare this Ninja Warrior TV show to the Land Runs? I mean… I suppose there are a few similarities.

The Land Runs were promoted as events of amazing opportunity, when in reality they primarily served those already in power. Much of the best land was pre-claimed by surveyors, soldiers, and other government employees who used their connections and power to beat the system. We don’t celebrate that part as much, other than adding ‘Sooner’ to ‘Boomer’ in that song, but 3 out of 4 people who ran went away empty-handed, often thwarted by those who’d never broken a sweat. They didn’t need to – they were already hooked up by the folks making the rules.

As The Lost Ogle documented, our Congress is similarly giddy over the chance to use even more of your tax dollars getting private tours of the set and meeting sweaty people in tights. If there are a few leftovers, they’ll allow a few members of the public to somehow benefit from this spectacle. 

Like the show, the Land Runs celebrated the fastest and the strongest – but especially those willing to step over anyone between them and what they wanted. They were in some ways the ultimate homage to the Social Darwinism of the times – to hell with the community, I’m getting MINE.

That’s fine for a game show, or a sporting event, or whatever this is. I wish it weren’t such a celebrated norm for the folks supposedly representing the rest of our state. 

I’m Not Sure ‘Local Control’ Is A Good Idea

Fox DynastyI hate to be difficult.

Actually, that’s not true – I enjoy being difficult sometimes. It’s how I learn, and how I try to force others to acknowledge problems they might not otherwise address, or clarify my own thinking regarding issues I find important.  In this case, I’m very much hoping those more insightful than me will explain why I’m completely and totally mistaken.

Because on this one, I don’t like what I’m about to say. It runs against my libertarian ideals. Worse, it’s one more thing likely to annoy the people I most admire in the education blogosphere, some of who have been quite decent to me even though I’m a bit player at best.

I’m not sure “local standards” are a good idea for public education.

To be sure, nationalized tests and oppressive curriculum requirements are a disaster. Forget Common Core – ANY standardization of what every child in every situation everywhere must know and be able to do as measured by bubble fillinnery, based on their chronological grouping is, well… insane. In a “you’re a very bad man” kind of way.

State requirements aren’t much better, at least around here. They flip and they flop and they still come with all sorts of stupid tests which crush anything positive about public schooling. They make us hate our jobs and they make kids hate school, all while accomplishing nothing – since the results aren’t actually used to fix or change anything.

So of course the only remaining alternative is to let local districts, local parents, local school boards, based on local circumstances, decide what their students should and shouldn’t study, and how success will be measured.

In some cases, this would be wonderful. Perhaps in many cases.

Luke & Uncle OwenBut while I love my state, rural Oklahoma is full of districts who don’t much cotton to them big city ideals. I don’t want to burst into a musical number from Tatooine, The Musical (“Beyond Uncle Owen’s Moisture Farm” is my personal favorite) but there are numerous districts where the toughest thing about teaching high school is convincing families there’s anything out there bigger than the local poultry processing plant or Assistant Manager at Dollar General.

I’m not one to argue that every child in every situation absolutely MUST pursue a doctoral degree before fixing air conditioners for a living, but I can’t abide the image of thousands of Oklahoma teens stuck hanging out at the Quikie Mart eating hot lamp chicken until their prowess at The Last Starfighter or a dancing Kevin Bacon frees them from the backwater morass.

Local standards may not aspire to be much more than local. And you can’t become what you can’t see.

I love my state, but Oklahoma voters – the same ones I presume would be helping to set ‘local standards’ in their districts – keep electing Representatives like John Bennett and Sally Kern and Senators like Josh Brecheen.

Senator Josh Brecheen, of course, is the man who recently cited the Old Testament of the Bible – specifically a passage suggesting that those outside the faith be hunted down and killed with swords – to support his opposition to Common Core.  We really must get him together with Representative John Bennett who is currently on his “Muslims are all Sleeper Cells” speaking tour condemning Islam – any form, any practice, any believer thereof. His reason? The Quran demands the deaths of non-believers. You know, like the Bible.

Gay TerroristKern is most known for her crusade against gay people, who are apparently much like Bennett’s terrorists. She uses her background as an educator to explain that she’s just keeping it simple for folks, explaining it this way. In her defense, she doesn’t much like blacks or women (?!?) either. Because so many disagree with her, and are in fact horrified by her remarks, she’s also the victim of the worst sorts of persecution.

“It just broke my heart because so often what they were doing, they weren’t just stoning me, they were stoning and desecrating the God that I love…

There was just so much hate, they accuse me of being hateful, and I never once said anything hateful. Such hate expressed against the Lord and against his word and then the way they, I mean these people, I believe these people, I believe scripture teaches this, they’re deceived and to me the real hate is from those people who say, ‘you’re born this way and you can’t change, deal with it’…”

In other words, because not everyone accepts her bizarre hate speech, she is the real victim. Well, her and God – who in Kern’s theology apparently has many of the same attributes and insecurities of Tinkerbell. New whine in old skins.

This is ‘Merica and they can believe as they like, although I question political leaders using their position in government to attack segments of our own populace. Kerr assumes blacks are naturally criminals because they’re lazy, but she’s not executing them in broad daylight for not walking on the sidewalk, so… um… I guess it’s all relative?  And I have friends who are not particularly fond of Islam no matter what its trappings and more who just don’t buy gay as a morally neutral issue. That’s fine – whatever.

But those friends aren’t setting the curriculum for my local public school. Xenophobia may be there in practice, but it’s not codified in the official standards for all to follow. Gay-bashing may occur verbally or even physically, but it’s not generally promoted by the authority at the front of the room or sitting at the big desk down front. On paper, at least, we’re trying to function in a global society. On paper, at least, we’re trying to look beyond the pissy Presbyterian next door and realize that right or wrong, we’re just going to have to deal with the “others.”

Local standards would roll this back. I’m not trying to be conspiratorial, but I see who these people elect. Repeatedly.

Local Control FamilyIt’s already problematic in many rural areas to cover the basics of various faiths as part of World Cultures class, or to explain Evolution even as a ‘theory’. I recently attended a workshop with a lady in a nearby state whose head was exploding because Noah’s flood was the mandated correct response in World History class covering major population movements.

Nothing against Noah or Noah’s god – but is that really so much less onerous than Common Core’s suggestion that written arguments must be supported with facts and reasoning?

And that’s not even getting into novels or sex education or racially integrated cheerleading squads – stuff that really sets folks off ‘round these parts.

Given the recent kerfuffle over curriculums challenging the narrative of America as the infallible bulwark of justice and freedom-eagles, can you imagine the approved versions of history in areas still angrily downing 32 oz. Keystones, listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd, and cursing the War of Northern Aggression? We can’t stop Donald Trump from arguing that Obama’s not a citizen, but that doesn’t mean we have to make “Kenya” the only acceptable answer on the multiple choice quiz, either.

I hate federal government programs and demands. I’m not a huge fan of the Department of Education or most other bureaucratic leviathans who feed on the nectar of paycheck deductions and red tape. But every time we’ve left important decisions up to local control in the past century, things get pretty weird.

Outside standards don’t guarantee anything, and we can’t write enough rules to force well-rounded, questioning young people to magically appear out of every high school. But surely we can’t just smile and trust that the same people who’ve got us to where we are today can will somehow burst forth in wise, long-term thinking about tomorrow.