The pond struggled this morning, it really struggled. It strayed off the reptile turf, and found it hard to get back to eating the lizard Oz grass.
After a correspondent's note, the pond started listening to James O'Brien on LBC, and he was on about a headline in The Times ...
Extinction? The pond thought the reptiles had already arranged that with climate change, or here if you like, but it seemed like a fruitful topic, until the pond saw the infallible Pope's cartoon this morning ...
Is that you Clippy? Where are you Clippy? Come on back Clippy ...
Worse followed. While listening to O'Brien, the pond started to browse, and came across another topic, this time raised by Peter Jamison's feature in WaPo, The revolt of the Christian home-schoolers, They were taught that public schools are evil. Then a Virginia couple defied their families and enrolled their kids. (sorry, paywall).
It was a ripper read and moving past the tales of physical punishment and discipline and the relentless patriarchy and the disapproval of parents and family feuds, the pond found this moment the most poignant, after the featured couple had moved their children into a public school:
It was Groundhog Day, a damp night in February, and a low fire glowed in the hearth of the Bealls’ living room. Aaron and Christina sat on the floor playing card and board games with their kids, while Ezra sat on the couch, wearing headphones and absorbed in a game on his laptop.
Soon they would be leaving to attend their elementary school’s “For the Love of Reading Family Night,” held in the school library, where students were encouraged to come dressed for bedtime.
As Oliver rose to change (Ezra, the oldest, would not deign to put on his jammies), Aimee told her parents how her second-grade class had learned that day about Punxsutawney Phil.
Aaron looked at her in bewilderment.
“Phil?” he asked. “Am I out of the loop?”
His daughter stared back at him in disbelief.
“He’s famous!” Aimee said. She explained Phil’s role in predicting the length of winter.
“I knew about groundhogs,” Aaron said. “I just didn’t know about Phil.”
“He’s really famous,” Aimee said.
Christina smiled at her husband.
“Home-schooler,” she said.
These were the gaps Aaron and Christina had become accustomed to finding as they learned about a world whose boundaries extended far beyond the one in which they had been raised. There were so many things they had not learned, and perhaps would never learn.
Stacks of books on the living room’s end tables testified to their belated efforts at self-education: popular works by the biologists Neil Shubin and Robert Sapolsky, as well as “Raising Critical Thinkers” by Julie Bogart, a leading developer of home education materials who has criticized conservative Christian home-schooling groups. Aaron and Christina were still young, but they knew enough about the demands of life, work and family to understand that they could not recover or reconstruct the lost opportunities of their childhoods.
What's the odds they'd never seen Groundhog Day? Hollywood, California, Disney, the Great Satan, unlike the almost Amish lifestyle on view in Florida, preached and followed by the mango Mussolini and Ron DeSanctus tribe ... (irony alert).
But this was the punchline:
“People who think the public schools are indoctrinating don’t know what indoctrination is. We were indoctrinated,” Aaron says. “It’s not even comparable.”
Put it another way. People who think the ABC is indoctrinating don't know what indoctrination is. The pond is required to read the lizard Oz. The pond is daily indoctrinated. It's not even comparable.
So with a hearty yelp, a hallo, a yoicks and a tallyho, it's time to see what the indoctrinators are up to today ... but the pond suddenly refused the first fence on offer ...
You could learn to be a bigot, but that was likely not the best way to make the right call.
After that refusal, the pond immediately tried to do a runout, as aged ponies are wont to do ...
Not really. There's only so much fun you can have with hubris and Ozymandias.
How about CNN? Truly the most pitiful of all, but they did offer Trump captured on tape talking about classified document he kept after leaving the White House?
Or how about Vanity Fair?
As Holmes headed to jail Tuesday, business editor Ellen Pollock was put on the spot to defend a soft-focus profile of the disgraced Theranos founder, telling staff she didn’t “give a ***k” about the criticism.
Sheesh, the refusal to license "fug" from Norman Mailer's estate is causing the pond and the Google bot deep concern.
What about the Tampa Bay Times and the anti-woke brigade?
Florida education debates rage on as hundreds attend Hernando school board meeting, At the center of the storm was superintendent John Stratton, who survived attempts to remove him.
Why Florida's almost up there with Uganda, thanks to Ron DeSanctus and the orange one ...
“Certain school board members and certainly this superintendent are turning a deaf ear to the concerns of parents and grandparents in this community,” he said in an interview before the meeting, which he did not attend.
He sent out text messages through his Empower Parents political action committee, urging concerned residents to show up and voice their concerns over issues such as the teacher who showed fifth graders a movie that included a gay character. That story gained national attention after Rodriguez, an Ingoglia ally, complained to the Florida Department of Education about the teacher, who has resigned.
An actual gay? Cue a pond fainting fit ...
What an inspiration, and no doubt the local reptiles will also look to Uganda for inspiration ... once they've had their fill of tranny bashing.
But after all the grazing, finally the pond had to settle, so perversely it selected a piece of recycled fodder from The Times ...
Kissinger will disagree? They take war criminals seriously at The Times?
Meanwhile, speaking of quisling sell-outs and lickspittle sell-outs, the lizard Oz editorialist was also at it, and the pond could thereby fulfil its brief and pretend it had actually paid attention to the reptiles this day ...
Well no. To borrow from Corporal Jones, if they don't like a drone up 'em, tough cheddar.
To use language and historical figures the reptiles might remember and understand, during the Blitz, Winnie didn't say, "feel free to bomb away Adolf, being British we understand that Chamberlain-style restraint is essential at this stage."
Easy for the reptiles to preach restraint, but if a drone happened to take out their fortress in Surry Hills, they might be singing a different tune ... perhaps along the lines of "we shall drone them on the beaches, we shall drone them on the landing grounds, we shall drone them in the fields and in the streets, and we shall drone them in the hills ..." (the original's here).
And with all that done, it was time for yet another distraction, this time thanks to the immortal Rowe ... and if you want to blame anyone for the pond doing a Tootle and wandering off the reptile tracks, blame James O'Brien ... he'll talk about anything and everything ... and what do you know, there's the whole of yesterday's show on YouTube, for gluttons for punishment ...
What to say about all that ? I may have to start spending 3 hours a day with O'Brien to find out. But it really is clear that Vlad the Imposter and his sidekicks really did think they were going to take Ukraine in 3 days and imprison or execute all those awful 'neo-Nazis' that infest the place.
ReplyDeleteAnd basically since about the 4th day on, it's clear that Putin and the Russkis have had no idea whatsoever to do. Even though as one Russki claimed (on tv) that Ukraine can't win because Russia is 16 times 'the size of Ukraine'.
As one pundit (sorry, Alzheimer's, can't remember who) said words to the effect of 'We must not lose the Ukraine war, but we can't win it.' Yeah. Much like the Germans in WWII until they invaded Russia and got caught up by winter.
Just from that brief snippet, it appears as though Petulant Peta is claiming that the voice will create an absolute nightmare of regulation and bureaucracy, all controlled by those uppiity Aboriginal folk.
ReplyDeleteI seem to recall exactly the same hysteria being generated almost 30 years ago in response to the Mabo decision. How did that pan out?
I’m sure that if you searched back even further you’d find that some argued that the passing of the 1967 referendum would result in crazed Indigenous folk rioting in the streets, storming the various Parliaments and - worst of all - not knowing their proper place.
Yeah, and didn't it ? Good god, man they went on to get 'native title' over a lot of the lands that we took from them.
DeleteThanks for the article on home schooling DP. I wasn't surprised to learn that one of the big wheels in home schooling has been accused of sexual assault.
ReplyDeleteGlad you could get behind the paywall Joe. For those who couldn't ...
DeleteEarlier this year, Jinger Duggar Vuolo — familiar to millions of TV viewers from the reality show “19 Kids and Counting” — published a memoir in which she harshly criticized Bill Gothard, a pivotal but now disgraced figure in conservative Christian home schooling whose teachings her parents followed. Beginning a decade ago, Gothard was accused of sexual abuse and harassment by dozens of women — allegations the minister vehemently denied.
Farris said it is not uncommon for children who grow up in oppressively patriarchal households to reject or at least moderate their parents’ beliefs. However, he said such families are a minority in the home-schooling movement and are often considered extreme even by other conservative Christians.
“I view this as the fringe of the fringe,” Farris said. “And every kid that I know that has lashed out at home schooling came out of this.”
There was a link in there to this ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/01/06/new-charges-allege-religious-leader-who-has-ties-to-the-duggars-sexually-abused-women/
New charges allege religious leader, who has ties to the Duggars, sexually abused women
"allegations the minister vehemently denied" Everybody wants to throw that word in, don't they - we now have a very large number of "vehement" denials.
DeleteWhat do they think - that unless they throw in a "vehemently" we might think the accused was just lackadaisical about it ? Maybe like "Oh, no I sorta think I probably didn't do it."?
But the thing about these creatures that puzzles me is: do they set these things up in order to sexually abuse - like did they start before they became 'religious leaders' - or did they become leaders then realise just what they believe ('vehemently', of course) they can get away with.
And just how many have gotten away with how much over, say, the past two millennia.
A documentary series on this mob - https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/jun/01/shiny-happy-people-duggar-family-amazon
DeleteSounds very tempting Anon ...
Delete...Shiny Happy People covers the family’s many scandals and splinters, which have unfurled publicly since the original show was cancelled in 2015, after it was revealed that the eldest son, Josh Duggar, had molested five young women, including several of his sisters, in 2002 and 2003. Last year, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison for downloading images and video of child sex abuse. Several of the daughters, two of whom were trotted on to Megyn Kelly’s Fox News show to publicly forgive their brother for touching them and who starred in a successful spinoff series, have distanced themselves from their family’s teachings (and, to the interest of celebrity gossip sites, begun wearing pants). Earlier this year, Jinger Duggar Vuolo published a memoir criticizing the strict control and fear-based teachings of her upbringing under the influence of a group called the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP) and its now disgraced leader, Bill Gothard, who has been accused by dozens of women of sexual harassment and assault. (Gothard, 88, has denied all allegations.)
And that's just the trailer ...
Hmmm: https://youtu.be/muGN_1N_ykI
ReplyDeleteThank you GB - a perspective for our times.
DeleteJimmy Page is a joy :-)
DeleteI also posted this one a few days ago, in case you missed it: https://youtu.be/wCQiPXDZHcc
Mr Ed: "the alliance [NATO] is not at war with Russia." Gosh is that so ? And didn't we all think that NATO was all about deterring Russia rather than being at war with it ? Russia still has winters, you know. But I am fascinated by the 'NATO on Russia's borders' rubbish, since a whole lot of places already are. Just like Finland, for example: another place where Russia lost a 3-day war.
ReplyDeleteHowever: "Restraint is essential at this stage, otherwise the war could escalate into something more dangerous." Oh yeah, "could escalate" into something "more dangerous". Right on, Mr Ed, you must be as much a statesman as Creighton is an economist.
ICMY: "Threat of 'extinction' sparks (what) crackdown" by Albo govt? https://twitter.com/KetanJ0/status/1664024704334569472
ReplyDeleteAh c'mon Joe, the AI thing is an immediate threat which could wipe us all out tomorrow they reckon, so make some 'laws' against it that will, in the normal course of humanity be ignored or just bypassed anyway, or pick on something - anthropogenic climate change - that probably won't directly kill as many as Covid did (and will) until Albo is well retired and he's left it all to his grandkids (when he gets some, that is).
DeleteWhen you turn a rock over.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.afr.com/companies/media-and-marketing/ben-roberts-smith-lost-big-four-partnership-job-20210608-p57z26
A handy link Anon, and to tempt others to follow back to 2021 ...
DeleteBen Roberts-Smith was offered a partnership at big four consulting firm PwC but withdrew from talks after the publication of stories that he claims defamed him and for which he wants millions in damages.
Bruce McClintock, SC, acting for Mr Roberts-Smith, said he will seek aggravated damages for distress suffered due to the publication of a series of articles; regular damages for harm caused; as well as claims for economic loss and damage to earning capacity.
PwC of all places, irony of ironies ...
Amanda Meade’s latest “Daily Beast” column features - amongst over topics - a look back at News Corp’s support for Ben Roberts-Smith over the last few years -
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/media/commentisfree/2023/jun/02/kerry-stokes-ben-roberts-smith-seven-spotlight-program-bruce-lehrmann-weekly-beast