Back in my old stomping grounds, Texans narrowly rejected Don McLeroy, the fundamentalist nut who’s threatening to turn textbooks into God first, Reagan second conservative hymnals. Well done, folks! The other guy is a moderate Republican who believes God created the world millions of years ago instead of several thousand, as McLeroy does.
McLeroy is still in office for some time, so the fight isn’t over. Thanks to the immense buying power of that large state, Texan revisions to textbooks often go national. Not going to miss this guy.
TPM runs down some of the highlights of McLeroy’s even-handed positions:
-
In 2008, he objected to including Chinese literature in English classes: “[Y]ou really don’t want Chinese books with a bunch of crazy Chinese words in them. Why should you take a child’s time trying to learn a word that they’ll never ever use again?” He conceded some terms, such as “chow mein,” might be useful, the San Antonio Express-News reported.
-
He said during a 2008 debate over science standards: “Is understanding of evolution ‘vital’ to the understanding of biology? No.”
-
Last year he instructed curriculum writers to “read the latest on [Joseph] McCarthy — he was basically vindicated.”
-
He described his textbook evaluation process this way to the Washington Monthly: “The way I evaluate history textbooks is first I see how they cover Christianity and Israel. Then I see how they treat Ronald Reagan–he needs to get credit for saving the world from communism and for the good economy over the last twenty years because he lowered taxes.”
-
-
Finally, McLeroy successfully offered an amendment to U.S. history standards to require students to be able to “describe the causes and key organizations and individuals of the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schafly, the Contract with America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority, and the National Rifle Association.” There is no liberal counterpart clause in the current draft of the standards.
ADDITIONAL: The latest story of Toyota acceleration raises a question I’ve been wondering about for some time. Why do people sit helplessly in their cars when this happens? In the latest tale, the dude drove at 90 for many miles and called the cops.
I’m not saying this out of armchair speculation–when I was 15, I lived in New Orleans and drove (you could drive at 15 then) a fleshtone Chevette, the only automobile geekier than the AMC Eagle. I was merging onto the enormous and crowded bridge called the High Rise when my gas pedal stuck. I saw massive traffic in front and behind, so I reached down with my hand and unstuck the pedal. Fortunately, that worked, and I limped the car back home. I wasn’t struck by some sudden automotive genius–I just wasn’t interested in crashing, so I was doing anything I could think of.
Next step, way I saw it, would have been turning off the car. The Chevette had manual steering, so it would have been easier than a Toyota with power steering, but is this really rocket science? Call me crazy, but if unsticking and braking don’t work, turn off the car, turn on the flashers, coast to a stop as best you can. Better than weaving around traffic at 100 miles an hour, as one unfortunate family did, leading to a crash and four deaths.
The cops in the latest story? They told the guy to use the emergency brake and turn off the car.
Perhaps Toyota should issue a public bulletin telling people to do this? Just keeps bothering me, thinking of folks flying around in mortal danger without this seemingly obvious knowledge.
UPDATE: What a remarkable story, from start to finish: Michael Pollan, “Unhappy Meals.” The best story I’ve read about food and nutrition in many years.
