You don’t need brains when you have beer.
My home state of Texas has much to apologize for, and our wretched contributions to the state of education politics is not the least of it. Decades ago, the right wing strategy of stuffing school boards full of right wing wackos—which is easy to do, since most people don’t research their school board candidates before voting—was invented and perfected in Texas. A string of nightmares followed in terms of right wing propaganda being pushed in science, history, and health classes. Some swear in East Texas they still call the Civil War the War of Northern Aggression in the classroom. I know that we weren’t allowed to read about evolution or the Big Bang in my high school science classes, though my teacher got around the injunction by assigning us to read a biography on Charles Darwin, which just so happened to have the theory of evolution in it.
Present trends promise to get worse with the appointment of repugnant wingnut Don McLeroy to the president of the state school board. He’s got some sketchy ideas on the value of knowledge for a man that’s supposed to be in charge of passing it on to the young. Check out his response on the question of whether or not Texas wants to continue withholding information about contraceptive use from high schoolers, now that we’re #1 in the country in teenage pregnancies.
“The idea that just giving them a lot of information is going to solve it, I think, is kind of naive,” he said. “Certainly, it’s more of a societal problem than it is a school problem.”
So we have the president of the state school board on the record as opposed to the process of giving people information. If we keep going down this path, in a couple decades we’ll have school board members saying things like, “If the good lord wanted children to learn to read, they’d be born wearing reading glasses.”
Naturally, McLeroy is not just against teaching kids about contraception, but he’s also opposed to the teaching of evolutionary theory in biology classrooms. Which means, not to put too fine a point on it, that he hates your children and wants them to fail to have a real career, especially if they have a hankering to go into science. Again, I graduated from a Texas public high school that had fundie fingerprints all over it, and when I went to college at a Catholic university, I really got a good idea of how fucked-up our education in science really was. After all, a lot of my friends went to private Catholic high schools, where they got a thorough grounding in the theory of evolution and even thorough sex education at some schools. Granted, the Catholic church has no problems with the theory of evolution, but still, the main thing is that the teachers at these private schools put their duties to their students first and foremost. Our teachers were not allowed to put us first, though they wanted to.
Kevin Beck has more on the most recent embarrassment to the very idea of education in the person of McLeroy. Some ideas from McLeroy’s own website:
* Evolution is “only a hypothesis, and a shaky one at that,” such that “common descent has not been conclusively demonstrated to be true and therefore can not be described as ‘factual’ in our textbooks.”
* “Medieval Christendom” is “a gift to the world”; it is imperative that “the gradual assimilation of Judeo-Christianity in the West” take place.
* Environmentalism, broadly speaking, is a crock of poo-poo.
I take this personally. Assholes like this have created this situation where, no matter where I travel, from New York City to Amsterdam, when people hear the accent, they start staring at you like you’re the inbred cousin-sister-wife of Cletus, the one-toothed snake-handler. And I have to defend Texas in the face of this, usually with something weak like, “We’re not all bad, though we do have a clear majority that is pretty bad. But hey, we sound cute when we say ‘y’all’, right?”
110 Responses to “One of my frequent apologies on behalf of my fellow Texans”
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“The idea that just giving them a lot of information is going to solve it, I think, is kind of naive,”
Wow, it turns out that contrary to what I learned on Schoolhouse Rock, knowledge is not, in fact, power.
That’s all very well—but what does slandering beer and its perfectly sensible brainy consumers have to do with it?
1.
I now know my next, most awesomest tattoo.
2.
Just because Cletus has one tooth and handles snakes doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a good heart.
3.
As a fellow Texan, with a five-year-old daughter about to start public kindergarten, would it be right of me to start her early as a pro-science, pro-equality rabble rouser? I really want to, but should she be forced to carry that load?
4.
Totally the most awesomest tattoo, y’all.
And I have to defend Texas in the face of this, usually with something weak like, “We’re not all bad, though we do have a clear majority that is pretty bad.
I’m in a similar situation, living in Alberta, the most right-wing province in all of Canada.
I don’t think it’s as bad, though. Our wingnuts aren’t quite as wingnutty as yours, although they’re working on it.
I’m from Indiana. I feel your pain.
One of my good girlfriends here has an awesome Lone Star tat on her neck. I’m not dissing on the loony Texas pride by any means. A lot of people have a healthy irreverence about it.
Try being from Oklahoma and now living in Texas. Everyone looks at you oddly - your pals in Oklahoma for defecting to Texas, Texans for being born in Oklahoma and the rest of the world for having grown up and living in such backwater places. It only gets compounded in Texas when I tell people I’m from “the Valley”.
My husband and I both have science degrees. Our kids will learn science from us. But it sucks that they’ll have to get a lot of it from us and not from school. Although I guess this will give them an edge over their fellow graduates?
I wanna see the front of the tattoo wearer. From behind, not so bad….
Indeed, he just about saved Springfield.
Whee. Seatbelts won’t save you if a 500-ton safe drops on your head, so cars shouldn’t have seatbelts. I would have a tiny bit more respect for the guy if he phrased his intention to corrupt the youth in more straightforward terms.
“Decades ago, the right wing strategy of stuffing school boards full of right wing wackos—which is easy to do, since most people don’t research their school board candidates before voting—was invented and perfected in Texas.”
Isn’t this a great reason to favor school choice and vouchers? So that every parent can send their kid to the school that teaches their kid what they want their kid to learn, rather than what some politicians decide their children should learn? I know in my own social circle my friends work themselves to death to keep their kids in Waldorf schools, and Quaker run Friend’s schools. If their kids got sent to the public schools, it would be “Class, lets write an essay about why we support our troops” all the time.
I’m convinced that the median IQ of Texans is the same as it is in every other state, right around 100, but that there’s a sharp bimodal distribution instead of a bell curve: People either have an IQ over 120 or one below 80. Everyone I’ve met from there is either smart as a whip or dumber than a bag of shit.
I admit that part of the bias against the place that I’m constantly fighting lies in having spent July and August in San Antonio, where it was reliably 97 to 100 degrees every damn day, which as a native New Hampshirite and distance runner I found unmanageable. But I was also amazed at the reflexive antipathy toward “Yankees” manifested by many of the, well, simpler Texas folk, who knew only that I came from “one o’ them little triangle states” where “all the women are pale and granola-like.” The college system is outstanding, but at times it seems remarkable they’re evenable to fill it.
Every time I hear some hilljack yammering about building a wall along the Texas border, I heartily agree; I think it would be great if there were a barrier between the other contiguous 49 states and Texas, a semipermeable membrane through which educated people could freely pass but not porous enough to permit mad Bible-boppers to seep through.
Anyway, it’s not the responsibility of conscientious people in any given area to apologize for the rest. Every state has morons, and a state with 20 million people is going to produce a greater absolute number even if the rate per 100,000 is the same.
The Texas education problem gets amplified because they’re one of the largest textbook markets in the country, so textbooks are edited to be tailored to the right-wing curriculum demanded by Texas, and the mis-education gets propagated to other states who have to adopt them as well.
It’s one of the dirty little secrets you find out while working for a textbook publisher.
3.
As a fellow Texan, with a five-year-old daughter about to start public kindergarten, would it be right of me to start her early as a pro-science, pro-equality rabble rouser? I really want to, but should she be forced to carry that load?
At the time I was preggers with #1 son, I was working for Greenpeace. I did NOT want my kids to be like those trophyspawn that the right wing trots out to demonstrate their full quivers to the world at anti-abortion rallies. I decided NOT to bring them along to my political bs unless they clearly understood what was going on and were down with it.
Wouldn’t you know it, there was just-turned-seven #1 son all over the German media with his hand-made “war is dirty” sign during the huge February 2003 rally - he got several camera interviews, too. He turned in a “go to NYC” chit to get there of his very own thinking. His idea? You bet.
Then there is Mr. Junior Life Scientist and #2 son, extrapolating the collapse of the Santa Claus racket to extinguish all and any notions that God exists - and explaining his theories to his classmates to the point of upsetting some rather rigid Papa Gucci Catholic ones (teacher! He said God doesn’t exist! Tattle tattle).
Turns out I didn’t have to do a damn thing. They came with activist genes and well-wired bullshit detectors and any manor of incisive logical and rhetorical arguments that support their progressivism and atheism.
Not to mention a fair degree of practical joke flair in that regard - like then-eight-year-old #1 son emerging from a room cleaning expedition with a large American flag sticker over his mouth.
Priceless!
Honestly, Amanda, even though you mention TX pretty frequently, I consider you a fellow Yankee. You’re assertive bordering on aggressive, opinionated and clever, you’ve been fucked with by a Catholic asshole and almost always display excellent grammar. That makes you one of us. Just buy a large firearm, motorcycle and forsythia bush and you’re officially a New Hampshirite. Or date a salsa-dancing foreigner, cut in front of people trying to get on the subway and become a walking encyclopedia of Red Sox lore, and you’re officially a Massachusettsan.
Welcome.
I consider you a fellow Yankee. You’re assertive bordering on aggressive, opinionated and clever, you’ve been fucked with by a Catholic asshole and almost always display excellent grammar.
deep6, i like you allright, but hey, screw you too.
i’ve dated a “yankee” for three years now and he still drives me up the fucking wall with his blithe assumption that it’s okay to hate on the south and on “rednecks”, who apparently are only rednecks if they’re from the south but are just country folks like him (rural mass.) if they’re from the north. except now, after three years, he amps it up and does it “on purpose” when i catch him doing it by-accident.
so i’m sorry you’re caught in the crosshairs of this, deep6, it’s nothing personal, but i think that for so many people to make this assumption — that we should just write off that many people off for being from a backwater full of half-wits who don’t speak properly — is really insidious, it’s just like nationalism, it’s a prejudice, and it’s offensive to me as a person from the southern u.s. who doesn’t think that she’s worthless OR that her worth is in being “like a northerner”.
i’m sorry to get all wtf on this one comment, really, i know everything is always in jest anyway, but seriously, that stuff’s lame. and it feels a lot less contemptuous coming from the texan lamenting the texans she has to apologize for that from someone congratulating her on being an honorary yank, or whatever.
Back off, roula. There was no “anti-southernness” in the post. If anything, I played up New Englander stereotypes.
I understand Southern sensitivity to the whole redneck thing, because the South has gotten a bad deal since the Reconstruction, but that’s hardly reason to find fault with a post that had nothing to do with you. Don’t go turning your insecurity into regional victimization that isn’t there.
Most of New England IS rural. Yes, it’s true. Outside of metro-west Boston and the North Shore, it’s suburbs, baby, and cow country, so whatever anti-rural vibe you might be getting from your boyfriend or other Northerners is probably just pretension.
And I hardly need to add that since the 2000 election, it’s been the people of Massachusetts and New England, generally, who’ve been taking it up the ass by being portrayed as immoral Marxist hedonist gay abortionists who are at this very moment destroying the fabric of American life by voting for Democrats, gun control and the teaching of evolution - oh my! So really, this whole whining about how unfair Southerners have it is just a whole crock of shit. That is SO ten years ago.
And I would also like to add, why would it be less contemptuous for a fellow Southerner to have to excuse defending her own state, than it would be for someone *not* from your region saying that person really would fit in? When I lived in Italy and Italians would tell me I fit in, my American friends didn’t take that as an insult, and neither did I. It was a mega HUGE compliment. If I spent time anywhere in the South and people I respected told me they considered me one of the team, I’d be really happy. That’s a cool thing to say to somebody, to express comraderie and you totally ruined it with your post. Thanks.
What is WITH this invisible ‘A’ at the end of the anti-spam crapola I have to type in here? Christ….
Ah Texas. I’m a Texan and I share your woes.
As a Yank, who lived in Texas for three different periods (but all were >20 years ago), I always had a love/hate relationship with the place. The deficiencies are well known (some detailed by Amanda above), but there was certain level of freedom, free-thinking and boldness that I found there that was quite liberating. (In contrast to a stiflingly over-governed place like Pennsylvania where immense ingenuity has been applied to complicating otherwise simple tasks such as the purchase of beer, and where the Turnpike Commission is a state-sponsored criminal racket.) It is too bad that much of that energy has been applied to “Hell yes, I’m from Texas” type BS, and it does seem that scary folks of a whole different persuasion wield undue control over the education system. But, for instance, not all that long ago, the state did elect Ann Richards to be Governor. I certainly do wish progressives in Texas great success in building on that independent spirit.
Because the Texas of Molly Ivins, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Townes Van Zandt, The Orange Show, Enchanted Rock, Anderson Fair, La Carafe, etc, etc. is a truly wondrous place.
Here’s your solution. Drag your ass to NYC, you’ll make a bunch of new friends, become a Yankee fan, lose that hick accent, and you’ll never have to apologize again. In fact, everyone else will be apologizing to you. I promise.
deep6, i’m pretty sure that “you’re not so much a member of A as an member of B because you’re awesome in ways x y and z” tends to imply “…and we all know that group A is NOT x y or z”. but whatever, maybe i misread.
i do think it’s important to clarify that i don’t feel personally insulted by all that, because i don’t especially feel like i fit into the stereotypes of dumb narrow southern sheeple or wahtever; but i do find the whole thing *offensive* because it doesn’t seem especially right that i avoid being tarred with the “stupid southerner” brush by demonstrating to people that i’m worth their time *unlike all those other southerners* or whatever. “you don’t ACT like a ___” is just really weird to me, and while i used to take it as a compliment back when i bought into national myths about how these people are like this and those people are like that, i don’t anymore, i think it’s a little ridiculous.
it’s also kind of ridiculous to say i’m ten years behind and poor blue staters who have been dumped on since bush took office. do you really think that snideness about uneducated southern people doesn’t happen anymore because the religious right is in power, or something? it’s not true.
and when i bring up how this is kind of shitty to do to groups of people, i’m apparently making a big deal out of something that’s just fun to do, but why? i just feel like there’s a lot of shitty contempt behind the supposedly jocular swipes taken at the south. like, “silly west coast hippies” or “snotty east coast liberals” still doesn’t have the same ring as “dumb southern inbreds” to me.
idunno, i know it was “meant as a compliment”, but that’s the damn point. but i’m still sorry to ruin your nice moment, and i mean that.
Anyone who thinks that by becoming a Yankees fan “you’ll never have to apologize again” obviously has a (typically) provincial NYC view of the way that the rest of the country views Yankee fans.
ok, and also, sorry for overreacting. i have to go to bed.
The biggest problem, even bigger than the millions of Texas children whose education will be screwed, is that Texan curricula spreads out across the country like slime mold. A mega-market like Texas affects all textbooks throughout the country. Then smaller states figure they should just fall in line rather than have no textbooks available for their curriculum. For decades the Gablers (who fund textbook purchases throughout the state) have been the terror of textbook publishers.
Going to public school in the south is truly a unique experience. Some of my favorite stories about going to an Arkansas high school include the time that my biology teacher told the entire class that the part in our text book claiming that the universe is about 13.7 billion years old is a lie, and when the principle had to make an announcement after summer break telling all the boys to please remove the guns from the gun racks in their trucks before coming to school. I’m still angry about the shitty education I received.
It just leaves me without words, the way of thinking is so backwards to me. If you have such a bee in your bonnet about creationism and evolution, I suppose you teach both, even though school is, you know, secular, rather than another place to push a majority’s dogma.
Opting kids out of such things is just cruel. Not only do they not learn about it, which leaves them criminally ignorant about important topics, but supposed “challenges to faith,” or whatever martyr cross said fundies hide behind in such debates, are great openers to have a chat about it and strengthen said faith. Ignoring things that you don’t believe in doesn’t make them go away, it just makes you less able to deal with them. Plus, I would want my heathen children to be able to, you know, learn about things I think are properly factual.
As sad as this sounds, I take comfort that my home state (Virginia) isn’t as fundie as it has been claimed, if really fundie at all (really just asshole conservative half the time). I learned about evolution in my public school without the poison of creationism, even if my sex ed stank.
Not to mention the way half of New York (the Mets fan half) views Yankee fans. Says this Brooklyn-born lifelong Mets fan now living in PDX: I’d root for the Texas Rangers before I’d root for the Yankees, and I’ve never set foot in Dallas (much less Arlington) in my life.
Decades ago, the right wing strategy of stuffing school boards full of right wing wackos—which is easy to do, since most people don’t research their school board candidates before voting—was invented and perfected in Texas. A string of nightmares followed in terms of right wing propaganda being pushed in science, history, and health classes. Some swear in East Texas they still call the Civil War the War of Northern Aggression in the classroom. I know that we weren’t allowed to read about evolution or the Big Bang in my high school science classes, though my teacher got around the injunction by assigning us to read a biography on Charles Darwin, which just so happened to have the theory of evolution in it.
Don’t forget the frequent book
banningburning crusades! When I was a freshman in high school (this would’ve been about ‘94/’95), our school district was involved in a particularly nasty imbroglio over I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Bless Me, Ultima, and others. Luckily, the outcry from the sane was so massive that those responsible were voted out at the earliest opportunity - much to the naked disappointment of one of the local “newspapers.”Yes, Lawrence Krubner, that’s exactly what we want to do. Instead of taking the effort to make our public schools better, let’s write them off as broken and jump ship (this nicely parallels the lovely idea that I often hear about the South/Texas, mainly: it’s crap, let’s rope it off, so it can fester in its own crappiness, while we non-/ex-southerners delight in our brilliance in a better place, far, far away from such contamination).
I mean, we wouldn’t be having this discussion if all kids were in voucher-supported schools, right? Evolution and sex education would be taught as a default! The content would magically be perfect and not be influenced by the local, state, and/or federal governments, community influences, business interests, or parents. /snark
I’m on the fence about the whole vouchers system, but I do get irritated when people point out that the public schools are crap, so let’s ditch ‘em, and go to these other, superior schools. Thinking that A is bad doesn’t necessarily mean that B is good.
Why not try to make public schools better, which I would argue is a tactic that I don’t believe has been tried in quite awhile (I mean at the policy level, not necessarily at an individual level, since I know many people who work individually or in small groups for change in the schools they send their children to). Or we could just sit here and call them crap. That does seem a bit easier.
Here is a Texas event at Fort Worth that you will not want to miss, “Intelligent Design in Business Practice”.
http://www.swbts.edu/index.cfm?pageid=920
Ah, Texas. Now I remember why I left. I can’t say I’ve seen a lot of anti-southern prejudice per se, living in NYC, but I’m still trying to figure out a good answer to the question, “If you’re from Texas, where’s your accent?” I’m from Dallas, where the accent is midwestern and the populace only moderately insane. The accent you hear on TV is fake. FAKE, I tell you. Bush’s included. Especially Bush’s.
Is there a state in this country where we don’t have to apologize for the surfeit of stupid? Wisconsin gave us Jim Sensenbrenner. Wyoming (sort of) gave us Dick Cheney. I think you have to apologize for your countrymen simply by being an American.
I remember when the fundies were taking over school and library boards in the 1980s. A radio announcer on a Christian radio show from northern Virginia told listeners about Christians running for office, and told listeners to vote for them. No one cared about the school and library boards, so these people got their foot in the political door. Now look at us. What a mess!
Since I live on Massachusetts North Shore, I can attest to it being rather urban, but there are lots of rural pockets up here with conservative folk. It’s definitely a stereotype that Massachusettsans are flaming liberals.
Well, at least your state isn’t reputed to be obsessed with corn. And currently being blamed (falsely) for the recent jacking of food prices. And blamed for the poor choices of presidential candidates.
Honestly, Amanda, even though you mention TX pretty frequently, I consider you a fellow Yankee.
I think I threw up in my mouth a little. Don’t worry. Purely a visceral reaction based on prejudices taught at the knee. My non-lizard brain loves Yankees.
You’re assertive bordering on aggressive, opinionated and clever, you’ve been fucked with by a Catholic asshole and almost always display excellent grammar.
There’s nothing in there that doesn’t describe a subset known as the sassy Texas broad to a T. Think: Ann Richards, Molly Ivins.
Darcy: We had the same gun rack problem, if I remember correctly. There’s no real reason to bring your guns to school, of course, demonstrating that they are mostly phallic symbols for the perpetually insecure.
Well, at least your state isn’t reputed to be obsessed with corn. And currently being blamed (falsely) for the recent jacking of food prices. And blamed for the poor choices of presidential candidates.
Are you a fellow Iowan, perhaps? Totally off-topic, but did you know that one of the top two choices for naming our new semi-semi-semi-pro basketball team was the “Iowa Corncobs?” Really, why didn’t they just to straight to the “Iowa Cornholers” - you know that’s what it would come to.
Well as a native Californian now living in DC, I must say that everyone east of the sierra nevada’s is crazy. Everyone should just follow california’s lead (in most cases) and the US would be a better place.
Um, we have entire Presidential campaigns run against our state on a regular basis. I think, behind NYC, we may be the most hated place for Red Americans.
(former Iowan here–born in Orange City, elementary school in Ames, BA from Iowa State, happily not coming back.)
FWIW, Texas and the whole country would be far better off with more Ann Richards, Molly Ivins, Lady Bird Johnsons, and Amandas (and Barbara Jordans and Sheila Jackson Lees) and far fewer Kay Bailey Hutchisons, Karen Hughes, and Harriet Miers.
Yeah, cause California is a model of efficient and effective government *rolls eyes*.
This is very fascinating, Amanda. Textbook activists (specifically Mel Gabler) came from Texas to Kanawha County, WV in the seventies when the school board adopted new curricula concerning Black History and controversial literature (and by controversial literature, I mean Greek Mythology and anything not written in a Christian worldview). Before it was over, several of the school board members were living in exile after death threats, one school had been firebombed, a man was shot and finally a local preacher wound up in prison for inciting violence. Futhermore, it set back the textbooks used in the county (this is perhaps the most liberal county in WV) by three decades. I wasn’t even alive when this happened, and the divisions and resentment between urban and rural, and fundamentalist and mainline Christians are still evident. All thanks to an agitator from Texas! Fuck you Texas!
Have you ever heard that line about ‘think of the biggest asshole you knew in high school. He’s a republican now, isn’t he?’?. Well that’d be my one cousin, HUGE asshole, dumber than a box of rocks, but a born con man. Well, he moved to Dallas after high school, became a born again Cowboys fan, started selling used cars for a living (seriously), went through a first marriage with a big-haired Texas girl who eventually wised up and divorced his abusive ass, then married a younger trophy wife. And yes, he’s die-hard republican. Gad.
“The accent you hear on TV is fake. FAKE, I tell you. Bush’s included. Especially Bush’s.”
Actually, Bush’s accent is drunk western. As in, he sounds like he’s someone whose drunk, and pretending they’re in an old western movie. (Really, really, drunk.) He uses colloquialisms that come from a region that only exists between his ears.
It’s so, so painful that people think that’s a Texas accent.
I think that one of the things that really bugs me about the south-bashing I see, is that it is most frequently used to deflect criticism regarding the conservative nastiness in our own backyard. There is a particular blindness among northern whites when it comes to racism which is that as long as they can scapegoat racism in the south, they don’t have to deal with the legacy of sundown towns, restrictions on property ownership, and the reality of segregated neighborhoods today.
kemibe - are you saying that Texans reason for wanting to build the wall is to because their afraid of raising their intelligence?
Being assertive doesn’t make Amanda a Yankee. Texans are a very assertive lot — the accent is Southern, but the manners are decidedly Western: brash and swaggering. It’s all well and charming on the over-120-IQ set, but not so much on the under-80-IQ set. (Paging POTUS.)
There are really two Texases: metropolitan Texas (where most people actually live) and rural Texas. The outer suburbs of Dallas or Houston or Austin have their share of churchy halfwits, but the cities are fairly cosmopolitan. (Houston is the redneckiest of the three.) Virtually every resident of these cities would concur with Darwin’s Law of Natural Selection. Many of them came from elsewhere and many, many more of them, like me, moved here from elsewhere as a child. There’s a legacy of racism in the form of ghettos (well, Austin never had many black people to begin with); kind of like Boston, Chicago, or LA, come to think of it.
Anyway, people talk funny down here, but not nearly as funny as they do in Massachusetts. So there’s that consolation.
My exhusband wanted us to move to Texas, He would constantly tell me how cheap it was to live there (he lived near McAllen).
I have a friend who moved there from here because husband “wanted to start fresh” even though many of us were trying to dissuade her from following.
A year after she got there they divorced. Their kids are being used by his naracistic butt. She’s remarried and would like to move because they are at a deadend with jobs, support, etc. But her exhusband keeps them there through the courts. She’s not thrilled about the education her kids will receive there either.
I’m sooo glad we are here in MA.
well, I’m orginally from Denver … all of you talk funny!
Purely a visceral reaction based on prejudices taught at the knee. My non-lizard brain loves Yankees.
This is so apt. I’ve lived in the Northeast for 8 years, I’ve turned so East Coast in my old age that I practically had the Woody Allen reaction on a recent visit to Los Angeles, but you will pry my general annoyance at Teh Yankees from my cold dead hands.
Well, it’s not a great deal better here in good ol’ northeast Tennessee. I swear, I think probably 80 - 85% of the population here would fully support banning the teaching of evolution in public schools. It becomes, at times, very difficult to live here. One day, I fear my head will explode
The outer suburbs of Dallas or Houston or Austin have their share of churchy halfwits, but the cities are fairly cosmopolitan. (Houston is the redneckiest of the three.) Virtually every resident of these cities would concur with Darwin’s Law of Natural Selection.
OK, this might be true for Austin, but otherwise, no way. I grew up in Louisiana and spent just about every summer of my childhood bouncing from one Texas city to another visiting relatives (Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio, mostly). It’s so bad there that on my first day visiting my aunt in Dallas, when I started up a conversation with the girl my age next door, the second thing out of her mouth was “You’re not one of those holly roller kids, are you?” This would not occur to any kid in a northern or west-coast city as an important thing to ask of another 10 year old.
Dallas, Houston, etc. might be “cosmopolitan” compared to Podunksville (I was super excited because there was a real mall, TGI Friday, and Marble Slab ice cream). But they’re glorified trailer parks compared to the major northern and coastal cities (except maybe Atlanta, which suffers from similar problems).
opoponax, that bit about the large texan cities being glorified trailer parks might just a bit overstating things. The cities of Dallas and Houston are both larger than the following cities:
Boston
Baltimore
Washington
Detroit
Coumbus
Pittsburgh
Atlanta
Nashville
Buffalo
Cleveland
Miami
Cincy
Indianapolis
and basically every single eastern city except New York and Philly (although Houston is larger than Philly)
The fact that a devout creationist has been appointed to this position is not only a catastrophe for the educational system of Texas but also may have a catastrophic impact on the rest of the school systems in America. The Texas school board orders all text books in mass for all school districts in the state which enables this board to dictate the content science text books used nationwide. Text book manufacturers, being more concerned with profits than good science, have time and again capitulated to the demands of the highest bidders. Thus, what ever garbage pseudo science dictated by Texas and a few other radical states may be forced on our educational system nationwide. Educators in my school district have been complaining about this problem for YEARS. I believe the time has come for a concerted effort to head this stealth attack on education off. I would advise everyone to start writing their respective state and local school boards and state and federal representatives expressing your concern about the educational disaster that could befall our children.
Um, as I native Iowan, I just want to say that the state is obsessed with corn. They’re going to need something stronger than “monoculture” to describe Iowa agriculture one of these days. And don’t get me started on the corporate hog lots…
Hey, I went to high school in Pella, Orange City’s scary cousin. And I have a Master’s Degree from Iowa State. We are the same, MacLeod! We are siblings!
Oh, and ditto about the “not coming back.” The election of Chet Culver, and the backlash against Jim Leach, led me to toy briefly with Iowa City, but then I remember which way the state flipped 2000 -> 2004. Maybe we should build a wall around it.
opoponax,
Trust me — in Dallas, for every Southern Baptist with a hick accent, there are a dozen metrosexuals cruising around in a convertible BMW with Versace sunglasses.
Not that that’s a significant improvement in my book. But it ain’t a trailer park. A spiritual cesspool of trend-slurping yuppie dilletantes, yes. Materialistic, shallow, yes. Think LA without any scenery. Whatsoever.
Also, it’s like the fifth largest gay population in North America. It’s just a big city without any real character or local identity, but it’s full of the same people you see in any big city, although obviously not as diverse as NY, SF, Chicago.
Austin’s actually not that diverse or cosmopolitan, but the average education level is super-high and it’s a pleasant city — arguably the only truly pleasant city in Texas. Lived there many years and loved it.
Why don’t Christian Reformers have sex standing up?
People might think they’re dancing.
MAJeff - How could you ever think I’d forget you, my favorite flaming fellow ISU alum that was raised in the 5th circle of Hell?
You’re one of the reasons I hang around.
I’ve been to Pella & OC. OC has the Pellans beat, hands down. The kids at Central actually get laid on occasion, but the goody twoshoes at Northwestern could give Bob Jones University a run for it’s oppressive dating atmosphere.
kac90b:
Only Iowans would think that an ear of corn is a majestic (& non-sexual) mascot.
But I also forget that Nebraskans aren’t happy without one or several in their back pockets.
in Dallas, for every Southern Baptist with a hick accent, there are a dozen metrosexuals cruising around in a convertible BMW with Versace sunglasses.
While I’m sure that’s true, in New York and Los Angeles, there are 500 metrosexuals for every religious wingnut. And that’s including the wingnuts who are Jewish, Muslim, etc. (there are probably 1000 metrosexuals for every fundie Christian). I’ve spent, cumulatively, probably 2 or 3 years of my life in Dallas and Houston. I’ve also lived in both Boston and New York. Wanna know the truth? Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio are, as a rule, less cosmopolitan and more wingnutty than New York and Boston.
This is no insult, it’s just true. Dallas isn’t “actually really cosmopolitan” unless you’re from Colorado Springs.
Hey, I went to high school in Pella, Orange City’s scary cousin.
I grew up in Des Moines - went to the Tulip Festival once. To this day, I’ve had a horror of wooden shoes and Dutch Letters. (ICK. Way too sweet).
Never trust a town that clean, I always say.
Only Iowans would think that an ear of corn is a majestic (& non-sexual) mascot.
I know. I hang my head in shame. And guess what is coming soon? That outsized paeon to all things embarassing about Iowa - THE IOWA STATE FAIR!! As my daughter says: “The only place in the world where you can get salad on a stick.”
In Austin, we don’t hate Dallas for being a big podunk, because it’s really not. It’s more that the entire area is a sprawling hellhole of urban mediocrity. The Threat From The North, as it were. We fear their corporate mediocrity ruining everything cool in Austin. Marc swears up and down that the damage is already done, but I still think that the city of Austin proper still has plenty of flavor.
mds - Some of us can’t leave! You can’t just write the rest of us off! We need your love, liberalism and frappes from the outside world!
Oh, that’s a scary place. You have no idea how much pressure there was on me to go to school there. It was almost an act of rebellion to go to Ames. I can’t imagine how much spending my college years in Orange City would have absolutely destroyed me as a human. It is such an oppressive place.
That’s why I always say the cool Dutch folks stayed in Holland.
kac90b,
The Minnesota State Fair might have you beat for various foods on a stick, but only because Minneapolitans realize there’s more to vegetarian cuisine than an iceberg lettuce salad.
Nebraska, where a full football stadium is the third largest city.
I remember one year in Ames, the hot t-shirt was: “Proof there is a God: Iowa State 10, Nebraska 7.”
That’s how pathetic Iowa State football is.
I know. I hang my head in shame. And guess what is coming soon? That outsized paeon to all things embarassing about Iowa - THE IOWA STATE FAIR!! As my daughter says: “The only place in the world where you can get salad on a stick.”
And deep fat fried. With cheese dip.
As usual, my wife and I will go and document the mullets, insane fashions, and the drunk women in the beer tents chasing the uniformed male cop ass. You’d think it was college all over again when it was cute to hang all over the cops busting up the parties.
My 3 year-old daughter loves the animals though.
Become a Yankees fan? I’d rather move to Texas.
And that wasn’t beer, it was Lone Star.
On a serious note; there are some things which Texas, Oklahoma, etc. do; as a whole, which drive me crazy. The Texans I’ve known have been pretty good people; sort of like the Mormons I know.
So there seems to be some fundamental quirk about the whole, which fails to manifest at the individual level.
That or I have some serious problems with confirmational bias.
If you saw that game, it was proof in a higher power - or copious amounts of weed in their locker room. It was like the entire damn Nebraska team forgot which way the ball goes.
Otherwise, spot on.
*Hangs head in shame*
Had one in high school. But I lived 10 miles from Iowa, so I think it was that proximity that had my H.S. basketball teams getting permed mullets.
*shudder*
I was at a residence life conference in bloody cedar falls!!!!!
hey, yer undergrads build fantastic bonfires though, uh, don’t they?
This is one of the saddest things about Iowa. When I was growing up, my grandparents owned farms in between Hull and Orange City. Indeed, family farming was a central part of the rural Minnesota economy in which I went to H.S. The corporatization of rural life has destroyed what good there was in it, as well as leading to environmental disaster.
As usual, my wife and I will go and document the mullets, insane fashions, and the drunk women in the beer tents chasing the uniformed male cop ass. You’d think it was college all over again when it was cute to hang all over the cops busting up the parties.
Get this - I’m actually going to the fair on “East-Sider Night.” Never been to that before, but I hear it is the ultimate in bad hair (including mullets) and wife-beaters. Obviously, I will have to wander to the Bud Tent and watch the drunk “chicks” with hip-huggers and belly rolls yell “WOOO” at everything. Help me.
And god yes, everything dipped in cheese and deep-friend. Confession: I do love the corndogs.
Had one in high school. But I lived 10 miles from Iowa, so I think it was that proximity that had my H.S. basketball teams getting permed mullets.
A PERMED mullet????? AAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHHH.
I think we had VEISHEA riots four of my 7 years in Ames (not all as an undergrad). My freshman year, I laid in my bed in Helser Hall as the crowds on Welch burned couches and chanted “Kent State! Kent State!”
I think it was one of my senior years, when an RA in Friley, where we had tear gas blow into the windows of the building as residents were sleeping.
In my last year there, as I was driving home from the Mr. And Ms. Black ISU pageant, I drove through where there had been a riot earlier in the evening.
From what I hear, they’ve kept up the tradition.
I’ve never felt more ashamed. *hangs head*
HAHAHAAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAHA !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yep Minnesota wins THAT one.
I think we’ve checked before, but I’m fairly sure you and I were in Friley at the same time. I walked around the Welch Ave. fire up Hayward to Towers from Architecture studio. I was at ISU ‘90-95, and Friley ‘92-95.
They explosively collapsed Knapp-Storms last spring. If you looked at the press releases, the administration went way the hell out of the way to make sure no one could party or riot up to the event.
Wear latex gloves and bring a can of Raid.
While I’m sure that’s true, in New York and Los Angeles, there are 500 metrosexuals for every religious wingnut.
Absolutely — I think I originally said “fairly metropolitan” or somesuch, not “one of the premiere cities ever to grace civilization.” I was really making more of a demographic observation than trying to be an apologist for Dallas, Texas.
(Although I must point out that once you get out of LA proper — the “Inland Empire” — there are probably about as many fundies as Charlotte or Atlanta or Dallas or whatever, to judge by all the imposing megachurches.)
Amanda gets it right, she’s a Texan. And can thus appreciate my new, self-appointed title.
Hey, where’s my new, self-appointed title, dammit!
Well, I wanted to be the Maestro of Migas, but I’m still the same old plebeian, I guess.
The fact that Texas can influence textbooks due to buying power is scary. I remember when conservatives were yelling about that very same issue in regaurds to California.
A few weeks ago as we were leaving to see a movie my 14 yo son and I got into a converation about evolution vs creationism - little did my husband and I know fuzzy thinking had crept into thinking.
He was honetly arguing that evolution is no better than creationism because both are “theories.” My husband and I turned to each other in the car and we had a look of horror on our faces.
He attends a charter school because we are against the mega high school philosophy of our town/small city - we really should have 2 high schools.
We thought we had really watched what was in his textbooks (my husband has a habit of disappearing at the beginning of hte school year with the kids science and history texts to review them over a weekend).
Anyway our son had not been introduced to the scientific definition of what a theory is, instead he was relying on the philosophical definition of “theory.” We are still trying to get him to understand these differences.
Education in the United States is doomed, we’re really some of the stupidest people on the planet and it’s only getting worse. I have a child who will start school in a few years and I’m terrified and angry. There are no good options, and scarcely any options at all unless you’re wealthy.
Being in Texas does make it worse, but where I live now I’d be thrilled if he learned God carved the moon out of a block of cheese, so long as he didn’t get stabbed or introduced to heroin that day. Guess I could move to the suburbs, if it were important to me that he get stabbed and introduced to heroin by a white person.
Christ.
I’ll shut up now.
Hey - I went to public school in northeast Tennessee and got a damn fine education. Of course it was a well-funded city school, but it still happened. My mom even taught *gasp* science there.
I attended a southern university with a high proportion of northern students- mainly new york and new jersey. during freshman orientation i told everyone that i was wearing shoes for the first time and that we had an outhouse - they belived me…
While my previous post made it clear that it’s difficult to tell MAJeff and me apart, in Connecticut we still call them “shakes.”
Whoa, I was in grad school there* ‘91-’94! Do you remember that place, on that one corner?
*ISU, not Friley specifically**
**Well, I actually did go into Friley on occasion, but not on official grad school business.
It’s weird that Pella was more uptight and insular, yet Central was so much more relaxed than Northwestern. To think that going to Calvin College could be like rooming with Patti and Robert in the Village by comparison. (All my least-uncool classmates went there.)
And for anyone wondering why some of us have turned this thread into Old Iowans’ Week, well, it just goes to demonstrate that poopheads are everywhere, in or out of Texas. Yeah, that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
Hey - I went to public school in northeast Tennessee and got a damn fine education. Of course it was a well-funded city school, but it still happened. My mom even taught *gasp* science there.
I attended a southern university with a high proportion of northern students- mainly new york and new jersey. during freshman orientation i told everyone that i was wearing shoes for the first time and that we had an outhouse - they belived me…
Wait, you were pretending to be from southern Oregon?
I remember when my cousin’s in KS when they finally got a bathroom in the mid 1970s.
Before that they had a outhouse, had a wash tub they took a bath in in the kitchen
Come on, ya’ll know the priority in Texas schools is football! For what other reason would the school boards of so many small West Texas Towns spend $1,000,000 each on artificial turf for the high school stadium? Why yes, it is the football program that produces fine upstanding young team players.
Native Iowans, disowned or not, all have a habit of this social rudeness. I like to pull it out when in discussions of how redneck somewhere else was just to prove that the South isn’t the only place filled with ‘em. And Iowa State is impregnanted with them.
And Old Iowa Week was actually last week - RAGBRAI. It’s a virtual week-long parade of Iowa down-homieness.
I probably took classes from mds. My resentment seems to be coming back already.
I have my wooden shoes hanging in the entrance to my apartment, and when my parents send a care package of bratwurst from Schmidt’s Meat Market in Nicollet, MN, there had damned well better be some almond pastries from Orange City.
Melly, where was that? While I also got my high school education here (although in a county school) in the 70’s, I felt like I got a great education. Things they are a changin’, though. My kids didn’t get anywhere near the education I got at the same high school.
Wait ti’l the Creationist crowd gets hold of this…
“-Learning to evolve: With a little help from my ancestors-
According to a new theory by Dr Stone of Sheffield University, skills such as flying are easy to refine because the innate ability of today’s birds depends indirectly on the learning that their ancestors did, which leaves a genetically specified latent memory for flying.
The new theory has its roots in ideas proposed by James Baldwin in 1896, who made the counter-intuitive argument that
**learning within each generation could guide evolution of innate behaviour over future generations.”**
Saying that what you DO in your life has implications for the innate memories and abilities of offspring.
LOT of Lysenko in here.
[my asterix`s]
And for anyone wondering why some of us have turned this thread into Old Iowans’ Week, well, it just goes to demonstrate that poopheads are everywhere, in or out of Texas. Yeah, that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
Oh, my bad. I probably started the hijack. It’s just so nice to see Iowans - current and former - on the progressive tubes. I get so excited. I’ll be taking my cell-phone camera/video to East-Sider’s Night, so everybody be prepared.
And thanks for the Veisha talk - I went every year in the late mid-late 70s, back when Veisha was still Veisha.
Durn Librul,
Kingsport - in the early 90’s. Right after I left there was a big push to “level” all the classes so that everyone was in the same course and supposedly got the same education. All the parents of kids in the advanced and AP courses had a meltdown so those courses remained and most of the remedial classes or those classes for students struggling with on-grade learning were melted into the average level classes, such as biology or algebra. The result was large classes of students with a wide variety of learning abilities and a sprinkling of moderate to severe learning disabilities and students with behavior problems (some quite extreme).
So that didn’t go so well. I am not sure exactly what the situation is now. My mom retired about 8 years or so back. Mainly due to the class we still refer to as “Block D.” I substituted for them on several occasions, and it cured any desire I ever had to teach secondary ed…
You take that back, before I punch you in the throat.
Two words for you whippersnappers: “Donald Kaul”.
That was you in that physics recitation section? I might have known. So we meet again, idiosynchronic… or, as you were known then, Cinorhc Nysoidi!
(If I want to keep commenting here, I probably need to lay off the drugs.)
OOk, I think there might be a little bit of misleading going on.
“–in Dallas, for every Southern Baptist with a hick accent, there are a dozen metrosexuals cruising around in a convertible BMW with Versace sunglasses.”
In Dallas specifically, the Souther Baptist and the mextrosexual in the BMW are one in the same. Dallas is full of bible beaters! As is most of Texas. The only place you won’t really find a Southern Baptist cramming Jebus down your throat is El Paso. But they are busy cramming the “virgin” Mary down your throat.
Anyhow, Texas isn’t the only place that education is falling by the way side. Its alot of places. Texas is just bigger, with more people. It just seems we breed more crazies.
I was born and raised in Texas. I was taught evolution in school. (Not sure why Amanda wasn’t, we went to the same school). Eduction in Texas as a whole and really the U.S. has serious issues. It isn’t even about sex education and evolution. I currently live in a small town in West Texas where most of the high school graduates can barely READ! (I know this because I manage several resturants, and have to hire these people, who are lucky if they spell their names correctly.) I think as a whole we have far greater issues with education than to or not to teach sex education and evolution. (though I’m in favor of both). Because what is worse than a high school graduate that can’t read? One who can’t read AND is having a baby!!! Yippie!! (Another major problem with said town). We should spend less time putting in $1 million football fields and more time at the very least teaching basics.
Again, I am all for evolution. I’m a firm believer in it. Its far more realistic than say………God.
OOk, I think there might be a little bit of misleading going on.
“–in Dallas, for every Southern Baptist with a hick accent, there are a dozen metrosexuals cruising around in a convertible BMW with Versace sunglasses.”
In Dallas specifically, the Souther Baptist and the mextrosexual in the BMW are one in the same. Dallas is full of bible beaters! As is most of Texas. The only place you won’t really find a Southern Baptist cramming Jebus down your throat is El Paso. But they are busy cramming the “virgin” Mary down your throat.
Anyhow, Texas isn’t the only place that education is falling by the way side. Its alot of places. Texas is just bigger, with more people. It just seems we breed more crazies.
I was born and raised in Texas. I was taught evolution in school. (Not sure why Amanda wasn’t, we went to the same school). Eduction in Texas as a whole and really the U.S. has serious issues. It isn’t even about sex education and evolution. I currently live in a small town in West Texas where most of the high school graduates can barely READ! (I know this because I manage several resturants, and have to hire these people, who are lucky if they spell their names correctly.) I think as a whole we have far greater issues with education than to or not to teach sex education and evolution. (though I’m in favor of both). Because what is worse than a high school graduate that can’t read? One who can’t read AND is having a baby!!! Yippie!! (Another major problem with said town). We should spend less time putting in $1 million football fields and more time at the very least teaching basics.
Again, I am all for evolution. I’m a firm believer in it. Its far more realistic than say………God.
>Isn’t this a great reason to favor school choice and vouchers?
No. Because the whole voucher thing, where I live, is an attempt by unreconstructed segregationists to get public funding for their white-only seg academies. Elsewhere it’s an attempt by elitists (not necessarily wealthy ones) to get public funding for their children’s private schools. The people who advocate for these things never believed in public education to begin with. They just want somebody else to pay for Biff&Muffy’s exclusive (and exclusionary) prep school, whose existence is largely based on “us” (good Christian white people) vs. “them” (poor and/or black people).
One time, after a conference, I got into a conversation with an activist from another state as I drove her back to the airport. Part of it, was, “How did you get your start as an activist?” I mentioned my undergraduate history at Iowa State, and she was like, “I have met so many people from Iowa who got started in college.” I guess we’re not so rare.
When I asked about her past, she replied, “My parents were part of the Dutch resistance.”
All people who have a sense of connection to a particular place do this.
It’s not particular to Iowans, Texans, Minnesotans, Michiganders, Cheeseheads, Massholes, Southerners or New Yorkers. If there’s a connection to place, and it’s shared, people talk about it. It’s a derail, sure, but it’s happened on a LOT of threads. It’s a way for strangers to connect about something
OK, Ames, 1987-1994. Friley 1992-3 (both as RA): Godfrey (92-93) and Niles-Foster (Spr 92).
Dugan’s Deli, motherfucker!
One last Iowa thing for a while (then off to teach a class). I mentioned on an earlier thread that I use the MST3K short that’s an Iowa State College of Home Economics recruiting film from the 1940s in my Gender class. One of my students saw it, and came up to me after class: “My parents met at Iowa State.” She’s been nagging them about it for two years, so this year they had something going on in the Twin Cities, and they decided to go to Ames for a couple days just to get her to shut up about it
MAJeff, I may have missed a correction downthread, but the Minnesota State Fair, with its amazing variety of foods on sticks, is in St. Paul, not Minneapolis.
At least you didn’t attribute the Winter Carnival and its ice palaces to Minneapolis. Those would be fighting words.
Well, here in SE Tennessee / north georgia, we just had a 19-yr old girl at the local Independant Baptist fundie academy go into hiding (the cops are looking for her) after somebody found the dead baby in her dorm room. Acording to the medical examiner, it suffocated in amniotic fluid a few min. after birth.
The school charter will have you kicked out for pre-marital intercourse or sexual contact of any form, and especially for obtaining an abortion or assisting anyone in obtaining such.
The school spokesman stated that although she is no longer a member of the comunity, the school continues to “pray for her and her family”.
//Gee, thanks, guys.//
Naturally, no mention is made of the father, who is most likely well on the way to a successful career as a baptist minister or family councelor.
Yes, but I’m not sure St. Paulites know there’s more to vegetarian cuisinne than iceberg lettuce salad, either.
The trouble with Texas, as with many Southern states, is that the constitution and the system of state government set up in the revanchist post reconstruction period is still in operation, even after the civil rights era. In Texas, this means a weak legislature consisting of people who can take a huge pay cut every two years to meet in Austin - which of course is an incentive to people being legally bribed by lobbyists with various jobs and connections, and people who have little qualification at all being elected to a legislature that makes so little of an impression on the electorate that few bother to vote at all. Plus you have the problem of a one party state - with the liberals in the state stubbornly refusing to recognize that, strategically, their real best chance is to become Republican and turn it from the party of right wing nuts to a party in which there is a viable and moderate side. When Texas was a all dem state, in the New Deal days and afterwards, conservatives didn’t migrate at the time to the Republican party, but fought like hell to retain the Democratic party. That this is obviously what liberals should do in Texas - or at least in those parts where running as a democrat is simple electoral suicide, not Austin - is never done. Too bad. On the statewide level, we’d have more voice in the crafting of legislation. As for Texas’ national representatives, if the ex-mayor of Dallas had run as a Republican against Coryn in the last primary (and his views were pretty much moderate Republican) instead of Democrat, he’d have had a chance, save the racial bigotry vote.
Blame it on air-conditioning. If it weren’t for that, not very many people would have emigrated to Texas and the South in general, and many people would have left.
How many would put up with the hot weather in Texas and the hot and humid weather in the rest of the South?
Air-conditioning not only pollutes the atmosphere, but also the political atmosphere.
Two words for you whippersnappers: “Donald Kaul”.
MY HERO!!!!! Cried like a baby when he was replaced with that boring wimp, Chuck Offenberger and his damn saddle shoes.
*Sniff* I still remember the brave column Kaul wrote about his doctor suggesting that participating in that year’s RAGBRAI might not be a good idea: <paraphrase>”Bah! I am not like a fly, who lives on the surface of life! I am El Bicycliste!”</paraphrase>
Well, I thought it was funny. And not in the way that Texas is. (See? Still on-topic.)