Politics Corrupts Parents and Fox Returns to Lying
Texas Wants 10 Commandments in Schools, GOP Plots to Keep College Kids from Voting, Book Bans on Rise, My TV Picks, and Melanie Sings
How Politics Corrupts Parenting
Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy (MSP) is a behavioral disorder in which a caregiver seeks attention to the detriment of the person they’re caring for. Usually, the parent is the culprit, exaggerating their child’s illness or even worsening their condition by slow poisoning or withholding medicine. Outwardly, they appear loving and distraught over the child’s illness, while actually making their child sicker.
MSP is rare in individuals, but seems to be an epidemic across the country as some conservatives try to use their status as parents to make us believe they are protecting all children when they are actually making them—and by extension, the country—worse.
Parenting is the hardest job in the world because the stakes are so high and the mistakes are so inevitable. Few things are more irritating than someone self-righteously lecturing someone else how to better parent. And yet, there are circumstances when that intervention is necessary for the wellbeing of the children. Parents can be mentally and physically abusive, negligent, or deliberately undermine their children’s futures in order to keep them closer to home. Sometimes the government has to intervene when religious conviction can mean keeping life-saving treatment from a child.
Republicans have made in loco parentis (Latin for “in place of a parent”) the main plank in their wobbly toothpicks-duct-taped-together political platform. Each time they ban or restrict something, they claim they are “protecting the children,” despite never offering any proof that there is a danger or that the law will protect them. To me, making decisions—like passing a law—without evidence such as facts, statistics, or expert opinion is a much more dangerous lesson to our children than reading Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret., which was banned because it portrayed middle-schoolers discussing the menstrual cycle. These politicians, and the parents who encourage them, would rather their children be taught illogical thinking rather than critical thinking, which is way more damaging to them as adults, as parents, and as career-minded people.
Worse, they are forcing this anti-education agenda even though, according to a recent poll, two-thirds of voters and parents “are not worried about teachers indoctrinating kids, pushing a ‘woke’ agenda on them, or teaching ‘critical race theory.’”
Two recent news items caught my attention because both use parenthood as a disguise to flog their bad parenting ideas—kinda like Wayne Gacy dressing as a clown. First, we have Moms for Liberty (MFL), the organization behind many of the book bannings whose website brags, “Our rights don’t come from the government, they come from God.”
Although that sounds high-minded, it’s really low-minded nonsense. In the United States of America, our legal rights come from the Constitution, which is the basis of our laws. And, though some of the founders were religious, they all weren’t. In fact, Thomas Jefferson compiled what is known as The Jefferson Bible (The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth) in which he removed all mention of anything supernatural or divine and focused on Jesus as a mortal person. This is why the Constitution carefully and deliberately requires a separation of Church and State. The Founders remembered all too well that the country was founded by those fleeing persecution by Christian zealots who demanded everyone follow their interpretation of morality.
Moms for Liberty isn’t Mothers Against Drunk Driving, whose efforts are to literally save lives. MFL may consist of mothers, but that fact alone does not elevate them to a morally superior position to make their silly proclamations. They have issued an 111-page book ban document that reveals them to not be mothers protecting their children, but mothers harming their children’s intellectual and moral growth by denying them access to ideas and logical thinking beyond their tidy nest. Most parents want their children to do better and be better than them, but these moms want their kids to be just like them. Not trusting their children to embrace the same morals without denying their children choices means they don’t have faith that those morals will withstand critical thinking.
The second entity using-parenthood-as-a-sucker-ploy is the “Dad’s Ultra Right 100% woke-free beer,” created by the director of Trump’s 2016 Georgia campaign in response to Bud Light partnering with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. Why is the word “dad” in there? To get the consumer to picture an outraged father doing this to protect his children from…something. Ironically, that kid probably will grow up to be embarrassed by their dad’s lame thinking.
Here’s a challenge, Beer Dad. You present all your evidence that the trans community is a significant danger to anyone to a panel of three logic professors. If they agree with your evidence, then you can proclaim your victory far and wide. But if you can’t, you donate everything you own, including your home, cars, and savings to charity. Same challenge goes to you Ron DeSantis and Ted Cruz.
Conservatives should quit hiding behind their children when broadcasting their ill-conceived, restrictive laws. But they won’t. Sentiment over children sells better than actual ideas. Still, it’s a pretty slimy tactic that doesn’t reveal good parenting.
Kareem’s Short Takes
Hunter Biden and ‘dirty’ New York: Fox News back to basics after lawsuit (The Guardian)
SUMMARY: “With Fox News humbled into a $787.5m settlement with Dominion Voting Systems over election lies this week, it might be expected that the conservative TV channel’s outspoken hosts would tone down the misinformation a bit, soften their rhetoric – basically, just chill out.
“…Instead Fox News has continued just where it left off, serving viewers a largely imagined, and utterly terrifying, version of the US: one where trans people are on the warpath, where people in New York City are never more than 6ft from either a rat or being murdered, and where the government is attempting to ‘send away’ Fox News viewers to an undefined but ominous sounding ‘camp’.
MY TAKE: After being publicly humiliated for repeatedly lying to their audience, you’d think the people at Fox News would use this as a teaching/learning moment to at least pretend to be journalists for a while. Nope. Economist Milton Friedman once said that “the business of business is business,” but Fox takes it a dystopian step further: “The business of business is lying, even if it wounds the country.”
This article gives a few examples that are worthy of closer examination.
After someone from the Department of Justice claimed that the DOJ was going easy on their investigation into Hunter Biden’s finances, Carlson accused Joe Biden of attempting to subvert the course of justice regarding the investigation. He offered no evidence that the claim about the investigation was true, nor any proof that Joe Biden was involved in any way. He then implies that the mainstream media won’t cover the story because of their liberal bias. And yet the original story had been broken by CBS News, and covered by ABC News, NBC News, the BBC, the Los Angeles Times and Associated Press. So, lying again.
Carlson followed this up by saying, “What we’ve learned here is exactly [what] you suspected all along: the Biden people are criminals.” Yet, none of “the Biden people” have been convicted of any crimes. However, eleven Trump associates have been convicted of or pled guilty to crimes, with several serving time in prison.
Fox’s war on their audience’s favorite punching bag, transgender people, continued with Carlson declaring that they were “blowing stuff up.” “They detonated explosives at the University of Pittsburgh the other night, because somebody said something they didn’t like,” he said. He then added: “there is an enormous amount of transgender violence going on.” If he meant violence against transgender people, he’d be right (“Anti-Trans Violence and Rhetoric Reached Record Highs Across America in 2021” Time). According to The Guardian, “the story, about activists in Pennsylvania protesting against an anti-trans speaker, was wildly overblown – the ‘explosives’ the students ‘detonated’ consisted of a firework and a smoke bomb, according to police…” If a firecracker and a smoke bomb equals “enormous transgender violence,” July Fourth will have terrorists at every barbecue.
This kind of rabble-rousing isn’t just bad journalism, it creates a climate of hate and violence against the LGBTQ+ community. Trans people are being beaten and murdered. Their blood is on Fox’s impeccably manicured hands. They know it. They just don’t care.
Fox News is like an old time opium den in which the audience lounges in worn leather La-Z-Boys, staring with moist, dreamy eyes, hoping this fix of curated outrage and lies will soothe the longing ache for an America that existed only in the foggy nostalgia of Father Knows Best. Fox is more than willing to be their pusher.