Belaboring the Obvious

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Meanwhile, in that parallel universe called Texas...

... the Great Texas School Book Wingnut Shoot-Out and Barbecue continues:

After board members settled the Christmas controversy, the focus shifted to which historical figures and contemporary leaders to include.

More than 50 people mentioned in current textbooks are not included in the proposed standards, including Carl Sagan, Colin Powell, Nathan Hale, Neil Armstrong, Eugene Debs, John Steinbeck and Mother Teresa.


[Heads up from the All Spin Zone]


Every time anyone posts anything disparaging of Texas, there are the inevitable people who pop up and say something akin to, "hey, it's getting better here," or, "don't be so hard on us--there are a lot of good people in Texas."

No doubt of that, but, face it, citizens of Texas, you're badly outnumbered by some of the most wigged-out, fundamentalist, batshit-insane, shithouse-rat-crazy critters walking on two legs and dragging ten knuckles.

And, now that the Texas Taliban have invaded your school board, you're going to make it much more difficult for the rest of us to actually, y'know, educate children. Given the huge amounts of money that public school textbooks generate for publishers, and given that all of them now are public companies with Wall Street breathing down their necks for ever greater profits, and because Texas is a huge market for textbooks, they will be sorely tempted to simply print for everyone what Texas wants, no matter how bugfuck-nuts the textbook committee of the Texas School Board becomes (and, guaranteed, the bugfuck-nuts members of that committee know that--they've got a reactionary conservative gospel to spread).

So, what's next, textbook committee members?

Kennedy never won the Presidency, and was never assassinated in Dallas?

Lyndon Johnson mentioned only as a race traitor?

The U.N. does too have black helicopters?

Jesus rode an allosaurus into Jerusalem in the world history texts?

Nicaraguan tanks did appear on the Texas border in 1979, but Ronald Reagan and the Texas National Guard repelled them with x-ray lasers?

In biology texts, if a sperm even winks at a human egg, the result is a zygote, and the zygote is automatically entitled to rights not afforded to actual human beings, until it is actually born. At that time, a careful assessment is made of its Republicanism, its Christianism, its batshit-insaneness and its willingness to believe anything it's told by a Texas preacher or politician, and if it meets minimum Texas standards for gullibility, stubbornness and Caucasian entitlement, it is declared human. If it does not, it and its parents are banished to the wilderness (California)?

The geography texts begin with, "The earth is flat. That's why maps are flat. Globes are part of a Communist conspiracy."?

The civics texts (optional in all Texas public schools) define democracy as "bad, because it came from the Greeks, who were a bunch of homos; therefore, democracy is part of the homosexual agenda?"

Joe McCarthy was a misunderstood patriot, not a crass, alcoholic, slandering opportunist, and his henchman, Roy Cohn was not a homo--he just liked fucking other men once in a while?

The Constitution really says Jesus specifically wanted the United States to be a Christian country?

Ted Haggard is a great American heterosexual?

R. J. Rushdoony was a famous Constitutional scholar?

Mexican wetbacks invented AIDS?

God's a Republican and an usher in John Hagee's church?

Texas, not cleanliness, is next to Godliness?

George W. Bush invented the telephone, the television, the internal combustion engine, the atomic bomb and Cheetos, won the Vietnam war single-handedly, and is a philosopher and orator known and loved around the world?

Hitler was actually a liberal Democrat?

Eisenhower was a Communist spy?

Molly Ivins was an illiterate itinerant?

Lone Star Beer was the best beer in the world?

Lead and complex chlorinated benzene-ring organic compounds are actually good for you?

T. Boone Pickens is a selfless philanthropist?



When you decide you've got to fix history, there's no end to the work to be done, is there, Texas?

1 Comments:

  • The other day over at Hullabaloo we were talking about commenters who add to the whole Hullabaloo experience. You weren't in the thread but I wanted to pop over here and tell you just how much I think you add to Hullabaloo with your comments. Smart, funny, thoughtful and well written. If you are ever visiting SF please drop me an email I'd love to buy you a drink and talk real time with you.
    LLAP,
    spocko

    By Blogger spocko, at 2:21 PM  

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