My Kind of Humor

 MCLEOD GANJ, INDIA—Letting out a sigh as he buried his head in his hands, the Dalai Lama reportedly was worried Monday that there was nothing more to life than feeling a deep connection with all existence. “Wait, so all there is to life is experiencing the full profundity of the interconnectedness of all things to each other, and that’s it?” said His Holiness, who grew increasingly panicked after realizing his entire time on this Earth would just be spent embodying the ultimate truth that there is no self and that all things are unified in their infinite potentiality. “So I’m just supposed to keep living day to day knowing that I contain all of the universe and the universe contains all of me? And I have infinite lifetimes of this transcendence? Ugh, you’ve gotta be kidding me.” At press time, the Dalai Lama reportedly attempted to distract himself by buying a PS5.

From The Onion. My kind of humor.

Change is Good

 Change is good. It keeps you on your toes. It means you have to learn new things. You meet new people all the time. You go to different places. There is always something new going on. Never a dull moment.

I hate change.

Fox Viewers Want to Be Lied To

 It's not just that Fox News audiences don't care if they're lied to. Lies are what they crave. They tune into Fox News because lies are exactly what they want to hear. 

I'm going to indulge for a moment in told-ya-so: I've long written about my view that Republican voters don't really believe the Big Lie, even as they claim they do to pollsters. Instead, I've argued, it's less a sincere belief than a collective lie Republicans tell together, as a power play and a show of tribal loyalty. In other words, Republicans aren't fooled by Trump's claims he "won" the 2020 election. They just think they're in on the con. Yet every time I write about this, I get serious pushback from people insisting that Republicans "really" believe this stuff. 

Well, if that were true, then audiences would be angry at Fox News for lying to their faces. That isn't happening, and no one expects it to.

-Amanda Marcotte in Salon.com

Nelle Was Not a One-Trick Pony

 Nelle was not a one-trick pony.  She wrote essays at UA  One is an hysterical description of Southern writers.  What Southern writers need:

An abussive father. an abusive, alcoholic mother.  mistreatment by older siblings.  all leading to the required unhappy childhood.  Sexual frustrations are especially desirable.  Self love.  Cursing God at regular intervals.  Best environment is a small town.  In the South is best.  Periodic race riots are a big plus.  Pentecostal and Holiness revivals are also a big plus.  Crooked town officials.  Bootleggers,  Blatant hypocrisies.

I think she nailed it.

She was loyal to UA and did not like Auburn. Apparently she was totally parochial in her political views and could not rise above her juvenile prejudices and grow to the point of maturity to what was best for the state she supposedly loved. She could be petty.

Her nickname was Doty.  Origin uncertain.

She was a great admirer of Jane Austen and all things British, making trips to England always by ship with her motion sickness.

Austen parallels to Austen's life and fiction.  P. 50

Good riff on Jane Austen.

Harper Lee once said she wanted to be the Jane Austen of South Alabama. P.51

Isolated incidences of kindness beneath her gruffness and rudeness.  P. 53

She only used the KJV believing it represented the classical language of highest English culture.  P. 55

Her favorite Biblical book was Exodus.  Why?  "Because they're leaving."  Who knows what she meant except:

Her own personal leaving was to head for New York.  She would have gone stark, raving mad if she had stayed in Monroeville.  P 56

Was she religious?  If so, it's complicated.  She liked C.S.  Lewis.  I personally dispensed with Lewis yrs ago.  P. 60

Wayne Flynt thinks her writings are religious.

Wayne Flynt - Afternoons with Harper Lee - Notes

Historian Wayne Flynt reminisces about 64 evenings spent with Harper Lee and family talking about literature, Southern history, and family.  What splendid Southern writing!

The Lees were devout Methodists.  I have trouble relating to devout Methodists since I've never met one.  :)  Nelle Lee attended the Methodist school, Huntingdon College in Montgomery, not a party school but not exactly intellectually rigorous either.  She was a notorious recluse.  Though growing up in Monroeville, Alabama, she spent most her life in New York City, preferring to write in the Big Apple.  This fact in itself is fascinating.  I wonder if she knew Willie Morris.

Nelle was obsessed with family and Southern history, well-versed in Alabama history, but unlike Faulkner she was not obsessed about the Civil War.  Most Southern writers find literary fertility in that war.  When Johnny comes marching home again, hurrah, hurrah.  Robert Penn Warren, take notice.  Was she obsessed with race like Faulkner?  Faulkner and race.  Please don't get me started. I have never figured out Joe Christmas.   Amazing that Nelle missed one of the key attributes of a Southern writer: she was not an alcoholic.  But she took her stand.

From family history,  hearing Southern stories, and knowing Southern geography.  She knew about the White Sticks and the Red Sticks.   Nelle was Southern personified.  Unlike Flannery O'Connor, a Southern Catholic trying to write about Protestant fundamentalism.  Good writer but she was a misfit here.

Nelle was not a one-trick pony.  She wrote essays at UA  One is an hysterical description of Southern writers.  What Southern writers need:

An abussive father. an abusive, alcoholic mother.  mistreatment by older siblings.  all leading to the required unhappy childhood.  Sexual frustrations are especially desirable.  Self love.  Cursing God at regular intervals.  Best environment is a small town.  In the South is best.  Periodic race riots are a big plus.  Pentecostal and Holiness revivals are also a big plus.  Crooked town officials.  Bootleggers,  Blatant hypocrisies.

I think she nailed it.

"I consider television quite educational. Every time someone turns one on, I go into another room and read a book"

-Groucho Marx P. 145

We Can Usually

 We can usually figure out how something started. Figuring out how it's going to end is more difficult. As Yogi Berra said, it's not over till it's over

I Am Not Bragging

 I am not bragging*, but though I was only a lowly history major, I know the six trigonometric functions, and I know the difference between an equilateral, an isosceles, and a scalene triangle, and I can intelligently present the benefits of each. I am no polymath, (I'm a little rusty on relativity, Maxwell's Equations, and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle), but I am no Forest Gump either. (I don't eat chocolates)

*I lied. Actually I am bragging.

Charles Blow Says in the NYT

 This was precisely the worry of Kimberlé Crenshaw, a law professor at U.C.L.A. and Columbia, who played a leading role in developing critical race theory into a discipline, when I spoke with her recently.

She said: “They started with C.R.T. They moved to ‘Don’t Say Gay.’ Now they’re moving to all of Black studies. It’s not going to be long before they include all ethnic studies. We’ve already seen they’re attacking diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education. And the real thing, Charles, is going to be when they come for diversity, equity and inclusion in corporations.”

This is the New Right’s strategic plan: a relentless push to re-establish and strengthen the straight, cis, patriarchal, white supremacist power structure. And, Crenshaw said, “this thing will not be satisfied by one victory. This is just one skirmish, in a wider, broader battle to make racism unspeakable and basically to contain the power of Black folks, queer folks, women and pretty much everybody else who doesn’t agree to the agenda of reclaiming this country that the MAGA group claims.”

In fact, every perceived win will only embolden the extremists. The objective is to win the war against progress and to freeze America in a yesteryear image of itself. This is a swing-for-the-fences play. They are seeking to widen the conservative aperture in their quest to suppress and reverse, to promote a universal vision on oppression, to apply uniform pressure.

As Crenshaw put it, “I believe that this is the battle for the next century.”

Updating My Skills

 I am in the process of updating my life skills list beginning with my long-time traditional skills that I still possess.

1) 1 can still change a light bulb.

2) 1 can still tie my shoe laces.

3) 1 can still twist a screw driver.

4) I do a great rolling stop at a stop sign.

5) I know the way to San Jose even though I've never been there.

6) I can usually name that tune in fewer than 10 notes.

7) I can't define it, but I recognize iambic pentameter when I see it.

I can change lanes on the interstate without terrifying anyone.

9) I know how to get a close shave.

To these valuable life skills I have recently added:

10) Multitasking playing on Facebook while impersonating Elvis.

11) Seeming to agree with opinions while secretly loathing said opinions.

12) Skillfully overcoming spell check in a split second.

I am a lifelong learner.

The Wind is Gusting

 The wind is gusting up pretty good today in Shelby County. The ides of March must be forthcoming.Small trees swirl branches, bending this way and that way, getting their exercise. A huge Blackbird makes an emergency landing on a power line. A good day to fly a kite. From whence comes the wind of Shelby County? what if a much of a which of a wind gives truth to the summer’s lie A good day to be philosophical.

So Lucky

 I am so lucky to have been a history major and an autodidact having continued to read history for 50 years since graduating college in 1973, If I were not a student of history, I would be doomed to perpetual ignorance.

Know Your History

 The value of studying history is it gives you, well, history, background, and perspective to understand current politics and events. Timothy Snyder, Yale Professor of history, explains it this way.

But if we deprive ourselves of history, everything is a surprise: 9/11, the financial crisis, the storming of the Capitol, the invasion of Ukraine. When we are shocked out of the everyday but have no history, we grope for reference points, and become vulnerable to people who give us easy answers. The past then becomes a realm of myth, in which those with power generate narratives most convenient to themselves.

-From the WaPost

Social Constructs

 Whiteness and masculinity are social constructs. Historically and through to the present, the intersection of those identities ("white masculinity") has created a social fiction and lie where in America and across the West white men are seen through the white racial frame as being inherently somehow more rational, reasonable, and intellectual than Black and brown people (especially women of color). The implication of this lie and social fiction is that, both implicitly and explicitly, Black and brown people are deemed to be not fit for full and equal citizenship in the polity. Trump's coup attempt, the attack on the Capitol, the Big Lie and its underlying belief that the votes of Black and brown people (and by implication multiracial democracy) are somehow fraudulent and illegitimate as compared to the votes cast by white Republicans, Trumpists, and "conservatives" is an example of those sexist and white supremacist values at work.

-Chauncey Devega in Salon.com

Gabrielle Zevin - Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow - Notes

Flat out so far one of the best novels I have ever read.

Two friends---often in love but never lovers---come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.  The writing is crisp and sure and sticks to my literary ribs.

The author has a description of Korea/Los Angeles.  I had no idea the Korean presence was so large in LA.

Sam and his mother Anna move to LA.  P. 82

Strange meeting of Sam with his father, George Masur.   Calls him George.  P. 83

Fascinating stuff: video game creation.  I do not understand it---a different world from my world.  Marx, their friend, is a producer.  Fascinating stuff anyway.

Just as Sadie calls Marx a "romantic dilettante" I am an intellectual dilettante.  P. 92

The Appeal of Racism Trumps Economics

 He lost it four years later, by three-tenths of a percent. Maybe the blue-collar voters who still lived there had seen the hollowness of his populism. Maybe they simply grew tired of the chaos Trump had caused. But there is a darker reading than the one Gerstle’s fine book suggests. Maybe the fact that the election had been so close, despite the year’s upheavals, shows that what matters most in American politics isn’t the shape of the nation’s economy but the enduring appeal of its racism.

-Kevin Boyle in the NYT

I Was Born

 I was born in a driving rain. It rained for four days straight. My father built a roaring fire in the fireplace so everyone was warm. The midwife did her job, singing sweet chariot all night long. Mother’s labor was short and sweet. A neighbor brought in pigs in a blanket. Apple cider was the drink of the night. They tell me it was a good night.

Not Only

 Not only should you take time to be holy, you should also take time to read Tolstoy, you should take time to treat your friends kindly and honestly, and you should also take time to be kind and welcoming to strangers, for you never know when you might be entertaining angels.

Will Self - Why Read - Notes

 Essays on literacy.

Behold! The age of Homo Virtualis is quite likely upon us, and while this may be offensive to those of us who believe that humans are made in God's image, it's been received as a cause for rejoicing by those who believe God to be some sort of cosmic computer..

P. 242

It was one of Marshall McLuhan's most celebrated insights that the mode of knowledge transfer is more significant than the knowledge itself: "the medium is the message."

P. 242

Orwell Says

 In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an aeroplane, they had to make four.

-George Orwell

On Santos

 

PTSD expert Seth Norrholm: "George Santos likely has a disordered personality"

The age of Trump: A lack of accountability coupled with the removal of the "conscience" of the GOP

Another Super Bowl is Over

 Another Super Bowl is over. What will we do now? Exciting game if nothing else and in my opinion nothing else. Oh, I was introduced to Rihanna. Never heard of her before last night. An added bonus to the game.

Naomi Orestes - Why Trust Science - Notes

 This book is a needed primer on science in today's world where science and the knowledge gleaned from science  is being questioned.   On any question or subject I always personally  look first to see what the science has to say about it first.

One amazing thing I learn in this book is that the so-called scientific method is not the central fact about how science is done.

Sonny Liston vs Sonny James

 An acquaintance recently insisted that boxer Sonny Liston was from Hackleburg, Alabama, which is over in Northwest Alabama, the part of the state where I grew up. Quietly I bided my time until he realized his mistake. Which he did when he realized he had Sonny Liston confused with country singer Sonny James. What a maroon! Unfortunately a maroon can pop up anywhere.

Drop by Rick's

 Drop by Rick's Cafe Americain if you have a chance. Sam is on the piano. We're looking for Elvis tonight, but if you do see Elvis please leave him alone. He sits in the dark alone at the end of the bar drinking Fresca and he doesn't like to be disturbed. The first time he came in Sam tried to get him to sing, but he comes in just to be around happy people but do not disturb him please. We respect his privacy.

Krugman Says

 For that matter, focus groups suggest that most people don’t know what “wokeness” means, or why they should fear it.

-Economist Paul Krugman

True and hysterically funny but tragic in our vastly ignorant country.

Gabrielle Zevin - The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry - Notes

 I don't read much fiction these days so when I do read fiction I try to make it count.  I will say straight out that this is one of the best novels I have ever read.  The main reason is the lead character, A.J. Fikry, with  whom I identify closely  He is a classic book, print oriented person who adapts to technology as best he can.  He owns a bookstore, he reads, he talks books, he deals with bookstore customers and publishing reps, he loves and extolls reading, short fiction being his favorite genre.  He and I are two of a kind.  I feel like this fictional character could be my best friend.

After his wife dies, A.J. lives alone in the apartment above his bookstore on Alice Island somewhere in New England.  Providence and Boston are mentioned.  His bookstore has sales ups and downs referencing the demise of independent bookstores.  He has a Princeton literary degree and his specialty is Poe.  He owns a valuable copy of Poe's Tamerlane.  Only 50 copies were printed.  The book might bring half a million dollars at auction.

The action begins when his Poe book is stolen mysteriously from his house when he leaves his house unlocked, the book on the kitchen table, and he is passed out drunk.  A mystery to be sure, not solved until the end of the story.

Shortly after the book theft, someone leaves a 2 and 1/2 yr old baby in his bookstore.  But who?  How did this happen?  The complete story works its way to the end of the novel.  Long story short, the 35 yr old man ends up adopting the baby named Maya.  A single man, widower after the death of his wife Nic.  Maya turns out to be as literary as her father.

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No Man is an Island, Every book is a world

P. 39 You, sir, are an idiot.

P. 62 A.J. gives Maya her first bath.  Doesn't want her to start looking like a miniature Miss Havisham.

P. 82 The first way Maya approaches a book is to smell it by holding it to her face.

P. 83 Precocious Maya started with picture books.  You can tell a lot about a story from the pictures, but pictures sometimes give you the wrong idea.  Maya would prefer to know the words.  The words are primary, not the pictures if there are any.

P. 90 "The Catholic Church is thinking of making me a saint."  Amelia

P. 96 "You are probably a more evolved person than I am," A.J. says.

P. 187 No one will ever love me that much again.

Each chapter has a reading recommendation to his adopted daughter Maya.

Pl 87 "A Good Man is Hard to Find."  You know everything you need to know about a person from the answer to the question, What is your favorite book?

P. 129 Twain's jumping frog story, not one of my personal favorites.

P. 187 "A Perfect Day for Banana Fish."  A scary choice.  A startling Salinger story.

P. 239  His favorite short story is Raymond Carver's "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love."  I cannot argue with his pick.

A.J. despises e-readers.  He doesn't react well when he receives one from his mother for Christmas.  An infernal device!  It is only after his operation for brain cancer before he dies that he is forced for ease and comfort to read from one in his hospital bed.  Technology is a final crutch.

The gist of the story is a cantankerous and opinionated intellectual man age 35 named A.J.   owns a bookstore.  His wife recently passed away.  The bookstore is on Alice Island somewhere in New England.  He is called on my an attractive publishing rep.  It takes a while but a romance develops and he ends marrying her.  Someone steals his valuable Edgar Alan Poe copy of "Tamerlane."  Someone leaves a baby in his bookstore.  A.J. ends up adopting the child whose name is Maya, who turns to be a reader like her father.  A.J. eventually marries the book rep whose name is Amelia.  His sister turns out to be the one who stole the Poe.  The baby was fathered by her no good late husband.  She was going to give the book to the mother who committed suicide for money to support the child.  At the end A.J.gets brain cancer.  He and Amelia sell the Poe to pay for the operation.  The surgery gives him another year to live.  A sad ending.

.  

.  

It Would Be Fun

 It would be fun to be a stranger cowboy in the old TV West. Ride into town. Tie up your horse. Walk into the saloon. Drop a shot of whiskey. Nobody asks you where you're from or what you do. You have a serious don't mess with me look on your face. Money doesn't seem to be a problem. Where you sleep every night doesn't seem to be a problem. You look around for a card game. You kiss your horse good night and nobody thinkgs your're strange. Kind of like Steve McQueen. My kind of life.

Ehrman

 

1. The Internecine Struggles of Early Christianity

Arguably the most significant study of early Christianity in modern times is Walter Bauer’s 1934 classic, Rechtglaübigkeit und Ketzerei im ältesten Christentum.[i] The book has forced a rethinking of the nature of ideological disputes in Christian antiquity, as even scholars not persuaded by Bauer’s view have had to contend with it. Bauer’s thesis is that, contrary to the traditional claims of Christian apologists, “orthodoxy” was not an original and universally dominant form of Christianity in the second and third centuries, with “heresy” (in its multiple configurations) a distant and derivative second. Instead, early Christianity comprised a number of competing forms of belief and practice, one of which eventually attained dominance for a variety of social, economic, and political reasons. The victorious “orthodoxy” then rewrote the history of the church in the light of its final triumph. This orthodoxy was the form of the religion embraced by the faithful in Rome.

While many of the details remain in serious dispute, and demurrals appear to be on the rise, Bauer’s overarching conception continues to exert a wide influence, as does his insistence on the centrality of these ideological disputes to the early history of Christianity.[ii] What, though, do they have to do with the MS tradition of the NT?

In February of 1973

 In February of 1973 (50 yrs ago!) I was dating this girl named Mary. We had 7 dates together before we discovered we had nothing in common. She was an accounting major; I was a history major. She was Church of Christ. I was Southern Baptist. The twain never did meet. I used to remember all 7, but the memories are a bit spotty now.

We saw the movie "The Poseidon Adventure." Afterwards pizza and cherry cokes.

Mary said, "Stupid people waiting for a rescue in the ship they should have known would never happen. I have no sympathy for them. Craven cowards!"

"You're judging them too harshly. Who knows what we would have done if we were in that situation."

"I know what I would have done. I would have vamoosed out of that sinking ship."

Okay, Mary, okay.

On the second date the subject of music came up.

I told her that Bob Dylan was my favorite.

I still remember the look of disgust that came over her face.

Her comment: "I'd rather listen to a cow moo."

Red Flag!

So who do you like?

"Elton John."

"I like Elton, too. Good singer. Too bad he can't play the piano worth a flip."

Revenge can be so sweet!

I drug her to a used bookstore once where I picked my 6 books.

She just stood there while I looked.

"Do you always buy so many books?"

"I always buy at least 6. Gives me a decent choice. Chances are I will read one or two of them.”

"That's lame."

"What's your favorite book of all-time?"

"Intermediate Accounting II.

Five of those six are still on my shelf unread 50 years later.

Red Flag II!

I wonder if she still has her Intermediate Accounting II.

On the 8th asking she said, "I don't think so, Fred. I think I've had enough of you."

Okay, but thanks for the memories, Mary.

Another Super Bowl is Upon Us

 Another Super Bowl is upon us. I have never figured out what is super about it. Maybe I just don't get it since I do not eat football watching food. I do not wager. I couldn't care less who wins. The buildup to the game and the afterwards go on forever. I don't pay any attention to TV commercials. Who cares? Someone please let me know just for the record who won on Monday.

The Purpose

 

Racism and white supremacy are a choice.

The purpose of DeSantis' thought crime laws is to intimidate and terrorize all teachers, educators, librarians, and others who are committed to education, critical thinking, and the truth in Florida (and beyond). In DeSantis' Florida — and soon to be across "red state" America if he and the other fascist Republicans get their way — there will be censors who review books and other material for thought crimes and other "dangerous" ideas that are contrary to the interests of conservatives. These censors and party officials and their designated agents will also rewrite history – and reality itself – to fit the demands of the regime. The public will no longer be able to discern truth from lies and fantasies from facts and fiction. The subversion and destruction of reality, facts, and the truth are a precondition for, and one of the primary ways that fascist and other authoritarian regimes obtain and keep power.

-Chauncey Devega in Salon.om

On Santos

 For that goal, Santos is useful. He is living the fascist dream of a man whose entire existence seems unmoored from the power of facts. If the MAGA leaders can turn him into a hero, he'd be a living exemplar of their post-truth yearnings: "Truth" can be whatever you want it to be. After all, right-wingers already hate the way facts — Trump lost the election, COVID-19 is real, LGBTQ people exist — get in the way of their desires. They just need permission to let go of that last tendril of reality and start living purely in their authoritarian fantasy world. Santos shows the way. It's unlikely he will be going away any time soon. 

Amanda Marcotte in Salon.com

-

What the Fascists Want

 What DeSantis and the other Republican fascists want is a country where white people are never made to feel uncomfortable. In essence, white people should never be made to feel challenged in "their own country" by Black or brown people who dare to speak the truth. The ability to choose how, where, when and in what ways that one will be made to feel uncomfortable (or not) is one of the basic tenets of white privilege – and other forms of privilege as well. DeSantis and his allies in Florida and across the country are abusing African-American history (and education more broadly) to fit that expectation. At the Washington Post, Karen Attiah summarizes this upside down nightmare dreamworld of white fantasies and paranoia as: "Instead, by singling out AP African American studies, Florida is showing us what the end game was always about: making institutional anti-Blackness lawful again".

In the end for Desantis, Trump, and those many tens of millions of other Americans who worship at the throne of Whiteness, America is a White man's country and Black and brown people are just guests.

-Chauncey Devega in Salon.com

Not Over till

It's not over till it's over over there.

-George Cohen

The Musical Hamilton

 The musical "Hamilton" is in town. Great entertainment but terrible history according to an increasing number of historians: largely historical fantasy.

The musical touts Hamilton as an immigrant. But Hamilton was a British Citizen as were all of the secessionist founders, coming to New York from the British slave colony of Nevis. Not my definition of an immigrant.

The musical touts a nation of immigrants popular during the Obama celebrating our mythical origins as a country. The musical is a product of the hopeful transracial Obama years which are now clearly shown as illusory.

To the extent that the show promotes goody goody immigration and tries to paint Hamilton as 21st Century political liberal, its politics and history are fraudulent. Hamilton was an arch-conservative. Today he would be labeled as a White Nationalist though secular. He was not exactly anti-immigrant, but he wanted to keep the fledgling nation white and British.

I could go on and on based on my extensive reading about Hamilton, and I have read all of the major biographies and histories of his era. On an historical basis, the musical (and I hasten to say I have not seen it) is surely great entertainment with obvious current political overtones, but bad history.

What a Dreary Day

 What a rainy, dreary day in Shelby County, Alabama. You know there was a time when I would have made hay on a day like this. While others would be using a day like as an excuse I would have been getting things done. I would have loaded 16 tons like Tennessee Ernie Ford. I would have run 5 miles before breakfast. I could have finished at least 3 spreadsheets. I could have handled customers with ease.

But now I am lazy and making excuses like everybody else. Like Paul Mc…

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Gordon Wood on the 1619 Project

 

“What we’re involved in is a momentous time in our culture,” he said. “We’re going through a great atonement, trying to atone for the 400-year legacy of slavery. The 1619 Project is an aspect of that great atonement.”
-Historian Gordon Wood

No Excuses

 What a rainy, dreary day in Shelby County, Alabama. You know there was a time when I would have made hay on a day like this. While others would be using a day like as an excuse I would have been getting things done. I would have loaded 16 tons like Tennessee Ernie Ford. I would have run 5 miles before breakfast. I could have finished at least 3 spreadsheets. I could have handled customers with ease.

But now I am lazy and making excuses like everybody else. I am just not half the man I used to be.

Travesty in Florida

 

In the latest salvo in his war on “wokeness,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has announced support for a statewide ban on a new Advanced Placement class on African American studies that will be officially unveiled this week at a ceremony in Washington, D.C. In defending the ban, DeSantis (R) and his allies at Florida’s Department of Education relied on a draft framework for the curriculum, and cherry-picked from roughly a hundred proposed topics to object to a handful of buzzwords, including “reparations” and “intersectionality,” as well as Black feminism and Black queer activism. “We want education, not indoctrination,” DeSantis declared.

DeSantis’s attack on this new high school curriculum is an extension of a bill he signed into state law last year called the Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act. This provocatively entitled “Stop WOKE” Act prohibits Florida schools from teaching history in any way that generalizes about what members of one racial group have done to members of another racial group in the past. “No one should be instructed to feel as if they are not equal or shamed because of their race,” DeSantis said at that signing, turning language that once might have applied to minorities on its head to signal to today’s White students and their parents that they shouldn’t be made to feel bad about anything their ancestors did to Black people.

-Mark Whitaker in the WaPost