Brace Yourself: There's A Movie Coming

"Parents’ School Revolt About to Get a Jolt With Groundbreaking Documentary" reads the headline, andf if that's not enough of a signal, here's the lead in the news release:

The COVID-19 pandemic has at least one silver lining—revealing the truth to parents and teachers about America’s public education system.

And this explanation of why this documentary had to be made.

For years, most government-funded schools have been pursuing a political agenda of anti-American history, divisive Critical Race Theory, explicit sex education and gender theory for children as young as kindergarten. These assaults on children’s innocence have often been deliberately kept secret from parents. These radical curricula during online learning triggered a parents’ revolt in California, Colorado, Virginia, and across the nation.

The upcoming documentary is entitled Whose Childre Are They? and it will use "brave teachers, emboldened parents, impacted students and frontline experts" to reveal "how schools are bombarding children with age-inappropriate sex education and indoctrinating them with political and social ideologies without their parents' knowledge or consent."

This coming from Parents United America, another parental rights organization. 

We are the parents and we are united! We will stand together for our rights to raise our children and be the primary authority in their lives. Our children do not belong to the government, the schools or society.

There's more in that vein (plus "non-partisan"). Its website provides little information about who they are, though there are links that let you send them an e-mail, your story, or some money. The founder, however, is Deborah Flora. 

Deborah Flora is currently running for a U. S. Senate seat in Colorado, facing a primary with seven other GOP candidates. She likes phrases like "common ground of common sense" and is targeting the "political indoctrination pervading our schools." She's made a Fox news appearance as a "Colorado mom." In her campaigning, she repeatedly stresses that she is a small business owner and a mom, and that's a nice folksy background, but if you're wondering how a small business woman and mom ends up producing a slick documentary, the answer is that there's more to her story. 

Flora is also a former Miss Colorado and a second runner-up Miss America in 1990 (her talent was playing the flute). She graduated at the top of the Meadow School of Arts at SMU. She completed a BFA in Salzburg (opera, flute, acting), then went to Denver Seminary. She had a show on the Salem Radio Network, and she started a film production company with her husband called Lamplight Entertainment. They've produced a number of films, but the one you're most likely to have heard of is the well-regarded Lt Dan Band: For The Common Good about Gary Sinise and his globe-trotting, troop-entertaining band. 

Her husband and partner is Johnathan Flora, a vet who served with the 82nd Airborne and was Director of Marketing for WWF for a time. His stuff talks about "working with" high powered Disney stuff like the Marvel movies, but that appears to be mostly on the promotion and marketing side--he's done a ton of that.

Not sure why Deborah Flora the candidate is hiding her light under a bushel; maybe she fears that a good Hollywood resume doesn't play in Colorado. But none of this is particularly secret or hidden. At any rate, this accomplished couple is behind Whose Children Are They? It's not going to be an amateur production.

The one big name attached to the project is our friend Rebecca Friedrichs, the plaintiff in an anti-union court case who has parleyed that into a career as a right-wing teacher union basher and rolled right on into anti-masking and critical race theory panic. Her presence here tells us plenty about what to expect from the film. On the film's official website, there's a link to Friedrich's organization, For Kids and Country (and it really is her organization--their 2018 Form 990 shows the only two officers are Friedrichs and her husband), which features many stories of brave teachers who were abused by the Evil Teachers Union. Some of those same folks appear in the movie trailer. 

The film will show in certain theaters only on March 14; tickets go on sale February 4 and are available from Fathom Events, which categorizes the film as "inspirational." 

Update: Somebody has put a ton of money into this, because now that the tickets are on sale I can see that over 700 theaters are booked for this. It is most definitely coming to a theater near you.

So if you hear about the movie, this is what's up. And you can watch the trailer, although from the first words ("Public education has gone off the rails.") you'll be able to gauge what you're in for. Critical Race Theory! It's racist! Teaching sex acts! Students aren't proficient! Radical agenda! Exploited children! And an unironic repetition of that title question, which supposes that children must belong to somebody.  I'll attach the trailer, but you've been warned. This is not the rhetoric of people looking for dialog or redemption; just a little scorched earth.