Yes, lets hire a creationist to run the state education board. Lord. Then again, this is a decision made by Gov. Rick Perry – previously of Texas secession advocacy and even before that, Lieutenant Governor to… George W. Bush.
So, it makes perfect sense.
Onward, backwards regional southern party, onward!
These are billo’s “traditional Americans”
Those rebel flags aren’t meant to be racist! They’re just proud of their racist, traitorous, slave-holding heritage!
Look –
I’m all over shooting down yet another creationist wingnut put on my state board of education to protect the children from the dangers of rational thought, but being a creationist doesn’t make her a racist. It just makes her willfully ignorant.
Being from Texas doesn’t automatically make her a racist either. You don’t need to crap on an entire state to make your point. A Rick Perry appointment, remember?
We do need to get in the way of the Board of Education here, as much as possible. Texas buys so many textbooks that selection of books here drives the availability of books all over the country. With consolidation of publishers over the last decade, there are fewer textbooks available nationwide, so the creationists can focus their efforts more strongly on the few that remain and do even more widespread damage to national education and literacy.
You don’t always need the rhetorical shotgun. The real idiocy here, aside from putting another young-Earther on the board, is that she’s not as bad as the first choice for the chair! The pro-science types are slightly less worried about her than they were about the guy tapped for the position before. Note I said slightly, because she’s also going to be a double handful to deal with, and she’ll probably get more conservative in reaction to the criticism she knows is coming while she’s sitting on the committee. And she’s only there to screw up the science guidelines and rewrite the biology and geology textbooks. The State Board of Educatin’ only deals with one subject at a time, and science books will be adopted before history books come up for review.
When you see an article on rewriting the history textbooks to be more favorable to the Lost Cause and omitting Juneteenth, then that picture will be appropriate. The last time history textbooks came up for review was 2002, so the next round of historical revisionism will be starting up right after the fight over science textbooks, due to be selected and purchased over the next two years.
Here’s an article about the 2002 history textbook meetings:
http://www.texasobserver.org/article.php?aid=1006
KC
KC, the mere fact that your governor has entertained secession with even a wink and a nod tells me about all that I need to about Texas. I would be delighted to see it secede; if at first you don’t secede [sic] try, try again!
I don’t like Rick Perry or the religious right, but if you are going to discuss Texas in an informed manner, I suggest reading this week’s special report in the Economist (lead article here: http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13938917) before doing so.
Also, according to that flickr site you’ve linked to, those vile t-shirts were photographed on the boardwalk in Wildwood, New Jersey, so I don’t see how they are apropos of a discussion of political life in Texas.
The link is http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13938917
The parentheses at the end of my prior cite busts the link.
Yes, because we all think with one brain down here. No obvious jokes about that, please. I didn’t vote for Governor Goodhair. Why should you assume I did?
The point was linking the conservative young-Earth creationist wingnut automatically with racism is crap. The rest was background for the first issue presented.
Thanks for painting 20+ million of us with Governor Perry’s greasy hairbrush. No Democrats in Texas, no sir. Shoot on sight and all that, right?
Ass.
KC
Also, according to that flickr site you’ve linked to, those vile t-shirts were photographed on the boardwalk in Wildwood, New Jersey, so I don’t see how they are apropos of a discussion of political life in Texas.
Politics in America has become “us” vs. “them” and “they” are always dumber/more racist/more elitist/less patriotic than “we” are.
But yeah, Oliver, this post was particularly sloppy.
I’m sorry but the south, and states like Texas, cheer this sort of anti-intellectualism on a far too regular basis. Sure, Texas is better in cities like Dallas, Houston, Austin, but the problem is the whole rest of the region. Are we perfect up here in the mid-Atlantic? Nope. But our wingnuts only have control over their Free Republic profiles and that’s it.
Jeesus, Oliver, just admit you made a mistake, okay?
1. The damned picture was taken in Jersey, not Texas.
2. You shouldn’t have conflated racism with creationism.
And IIRC, just last week some low-income minority kids were kicked out of a swimming pool… in Philadelphia, PA not Philadelphia Mississippi.
The picture was there to illustrate a mindset, which while found everywhere (including here in MD, especially on the eastern shore) has a home in the south.
You shouldn’t have conflated racism with creationism
They’re both intellectually deficient and resistant to outside knowledge, often they overlap.
Yes, the pool incident happened up in the north. So, that’s like 1 to 1000?
A picture from Wildwood, NJ to depict a mindset of people in Texas?
If Glenn Reynolds had done something even remotely like that Media Matters would be on it like white on rice, and you’d be linking to it with a blog post of your own saying how dishonest and laughable it was.
Most creationists aren’t racist. To argue that the two belief systems go hand in hand is a cheap shot. It’s also intellectually lazy and dishonest.
The picture was there to illustrate a mindset, which while found everywhere (including here in MD, especially on the eastern shore) has a home in the south.
Why does it have to be “us” vs. “them”? Isn’t it more productive to acknowledge that racism still exists everywhere in this country? Trying to pawn it all off on the south gives the rest of the country a free ride – ‘It’s not our problem, it’s just those ignorant red necks.’
Yes, the pool incident happened up in the north. So, that’s like 1 to 1000?
Which is the same argument cons make on your blog whenever you point out malfeasance on the part of Republican lawmakers: ‘Yeah, but this dem did it too!’
And god help me on the day I find myself in agreement with Dennis.
“You don’t need to crap on an entire state to make your point.”
Ok, how about crapping on an entire region?
http://fuckthesouth.com/
Still as poignant now as it was 5 years ago.
Lol, SQ.
FWIW, I agreed with you on your take the other day on the manager of that pool outside Philly being a huge Obama supporter in that, ‘Really, what difference did it make?, it was wrong regardless’. And it was.
The only difference that it makes is that liberal blogs won’t make a big deal out of it near as much as they would if the guy was a conservative, or even if his political bent weren’t even known. It serves little to no useful purpose for liberal blogs to point out racism coming from liberals.
Must be a ‘mindset’ thing.
“You shouldn’t have conflated racism with creationism.”
Ah, yes, he should have. The very idea of creationism is racist, period. Remember the little Buybull story about Cain? About how Cain was set with a “mark” and cast out by God to wander into the land of Nod? You DO realize that Nod was another name for Africa, don’t you? And how Cain found people there in the land of Nod– but these were not people created by God in the Garden. So who were they?
Answer: Africans.
Now, you may be saying, “Well, that’s just speculation and subjective interpretation.” Well, THAT’s the interpretaion I was taught as a child in church. And I know I’m not the only one.
The very idea of creationism is racist, period.
Bullshit. A very small minority of fundamentalists and evangelicals are racist – but then, so are some atheists, Jews, and mainstream Christians.
This is one of your weaker posts – you make the mistake of judging a region by the caliber of its politicians. By that measure, my state, Illinois, would probably beat Texas in incompetency rankings. We had a governor forced out of office due to rumors he was trying to sell a Senate seat. His successor is still trying to double the state income tax (not a typo), rather than first reform the bloated public pension system. We have a junior Senator who is clearly out of his element representing us in DC. The mayor of Chicago is intent on saddling the city with $500 million in costs for an Olympics which will leave few lasting benefits. He already angered the city with his boneheaded parking meter plan, which is already damaging small businesses, theater operators, restaurants, etc. As for the schools, even in the suburbs, it is not uncommon to pay $15,000 a year in property taxes for very average schools.
And yet, I still choose to live here – because the people I have met people here who do live up to the stereotype of the Midwest – lacking pretension, strong work ethic, always willing to help out a neighbor.
Most of the Southerners I have interacted with are not politicians, but engineers (that is my field of business). And they are no different than engineers I deal with in California. I’m not going to change my opinion of them because their politicians are fools.
The Economist profile of Texas is a terrific piece. It does not spare Texas – it rightfully points out the state leads in number of uninsured, poor social mobility etc. My problem is that for a state that prides itself on a do it yourself persona, it sure receives a lot of federal government money. Houston would probably not be a hive of engineering activity if it were not for the Johnson Space Center.
California and New York, by contrast, like to offer generous safety nets and benefits to its public employees, but it does not like to pay for them. Or, it likes to tax heavily a small portion of people of high net worth. The problem is, such people are very mobile, and can just decamp to a state where they can escape the tax man, like Florida.
As for the Confederate flag, it was a flag that represents a group of people who rejected the Stars & Stripes. It is a flag for traitors. But, to show that I am a hypocrite on this matter, there are few sights as fetching as an in-shape woman wearing a Confederate Flag swimsuit. But that can just be that I enjoy the sight of an attractive woman – period. A Canadian flag swimsuit would be just as nice.
The only difference that it makes is that liberal blogs won’t make a big deal out of it near as much as they would if the guy was a conservative, or even if his political bent weren’t even known. It serves little to no useful purpose for liberal blogs to point out racism coming from liberals.
Dennis,
while I agree that this phenomenon is not unknown on oliverwillis.com, I would argue that it is the nature of the blogging beast. And that you would find the same crap on a conservative blog. So why point it out at all, in a case as egregious as the one in Philly? Why not just say, “Gosh, that’s horrific and unacceptable” and move on?
“Bullshit. A very small minority of fundamentalists and evangelicals are racist – but then, so are some atheists, Jews, and mainstream Christians.”
And there you go, playing the deflection game again. “Yeah,well, so and so and so and so and so and so are racists too.”
Tell ya what– I’ll stay out of your churches, and you keep your fairy-tales out of my government, and we’ll call it even, k? I don’t give a rat’s ass if you believe the Earth was brought in by a giant space stork– it’s MYTHOLOGY, and NOT science, and it has NO place in public policy. Why you can’t seem to wrap your head around that is beyond me.
Tell ya what– I’ll stay out of your churches, and you keep your fairy-tales out of my government, and we’ll call it even, k? I don’t give a rat’s ass if you believe the Earth was brought in by a giant space stork– it’s MYTHOLOGY, and NOT science, and it has NO place in public policy. Why you can’t seem to wrap your head around that is beyond me.
WTF are you talking about? I teach evolution and big bang theory, often to college freshmen raised in very fundamentalist households. Do you have any clue how many forms “creationism” takes in this society? So no, it is not okay to conflate racism with creationism. It’s not only intellectually dishonest, it’s counterproductive.
So you keep your jackassery at home and we’ll call it even, ‘kay?
And yet, Ivy, you just made the case that creationism and racism were one and the same by describing a Bible passage that you claimed linked the two.
If you were as concerned about science as you say you are, you’d provide some verifiables statistics that showed a definite correlation.
Dennis, blow me. I don’t deal with you. Ever.
Quaker– WTF are YOU talking about? So you teach big bang theory. Oooh, impressed. All I can say about that is you should know better then, shouldn’t you? Creationism is myth, it’s not reality, end of fucking story, k? BITE ME. Asshole.
Who said it wasn’t a myth? I simply pointed out that it’s a cheap shot to equate creationism with racism.
Take a clue: not everyone who disagrees with you is a red-neck, hick, fundamentalist, evangelical, or whatever other boogeyman keeps you up at night.
Wow, Ivy, you’re losing it. You got nothing yet you go all half-cocked pretending you know what you’re talking about. Then when asked to produce anything other than a Bible passage as a source, you say you don’t deal.
You’re in Meltdown Mode.
My apologies, Mr. Willis, for losing my temper on your blog. Between this and the JWs incessantly ringing my buzzer this morning, I’ve had it up to my eyebrows with the God zombies.
BITE ME. Asshole.
And you apologize to Oliver?
Yeah, it’s his blog.
KC, the mere fact that your governor has entertained secession with even a wink and a nod tells me about all that I need to about Texas. I would be delighted to see it secede; if at first you don’t secede [sic] try, try again!
Although, I am perfectly willing to establish Austin as a sovereignty within the traitorous country of the People’s Republic of Texastan. Kind of like West Berlin.