Monday, November 13, 2023
OH: Foxes in Charge of Henhouses
Sunday, November 12, 2023
ICYMI: My Mom's Birthday Edition (11/12)
As Wyoming voters lose faith in churches, politics is the new religion
Poisoned Water in Missouri Public Schools? Let The Kids Eat Cake.
Nonbinary teacher at Florida school fired for using 'Mx.' as courtesy title
It’s Fall and I Have A Mild Case of Teacher Brain
Thursday, November 9, 2023
A Handy Guide To Privatizers
Chaos is the product. It’s a lot easier to break something than to build something or to improve upon it.
Wednesday, November 8, 2023
Why A National Christian Foundation?
Why is it that the continuing theme among certain folks is that this country was founded on Christian (or Judeo-Christian) principles? How does the myth of a Christian nation, and the desire to teach it to the young, fit in their larger picture?
We could devote an entire book or twelve to how that claim is incorrect, but the simplest end run around that argument is that this nation's founding fathers could not agree about anything-- not even whether or not they wanted to be founding fathers of this country-- and so we should understand any statement along the lines of "The founding fathers all wanted X" is automatically disqualified.
The Christian nation myth is certainly about establishing the primacy of Christianity in American life along with a privileged position for its adherents.
But for many folks, the nation established on Christian principles myth goes hand in hand with a disbelief in democracy.
I know we all understand that some folks in this country don't much care for democracy, but I'm not sure we all understand just how much some folks disagree with democracy entirely. They could tolerate it for a long time while it was a game they were in a position to win. But as white Christians become an ever-smaller part of US citizenry, the dislike of democracy is becoming more open.
Just this morning, we've got Rick Santorum saying out loud with his mouth the words "pure democracies are not the way to run a country."
Robert P. Jones, honcho of Public Religion Research Institute (part of Brookings), in an interview with Chauncey DeVega, made this point while talking about Mike Johnson:
If you listen carefully to Johnson and others on the right, they use the word "republic" and not "democracy." That is not just something pedantic. They believe in the rule of the virtuous, not in a "we the people" democracy where everyone is equally represented. What they're actually committed to is a particular outcome where America's laws and government and society correspond to God's laws as they see it. That's the only legitimate outcome for Johnson and other white Christian nationalists. Everything else is illegitimate. They will use the language of democracy and voting if it achieves their ends and goals, but Johnson and the other white Christian nationalists and many other conservatives at present are not committed to those principles and values if they come out on the losing side of a democratic election.Tuesday, November 7, 2023
The Anti-Reading Crowd Is Never Satisfied
“They’re Just requiring school districts to not indoctrinate our kids on things that our sexually inappropriate,” added Keith Flaugh, of the grassroots political organization Florida Citizens Alliance. “I often say, to folks that call it book banning, so … are you ok with prohibiting guns and drugs in schools? The Role of the school districts is to provide a safe environment.”
Sunday, November 5, 2023
Life Is Not A Cabaret, Old Chum
My wife, an enormously talented human being, performed in the local theater production of Cabaret last weekend. Of course, I went to see the show, despite the fact that it is a tough-edged piece of Kander-Ebb genius, a dark, hard show to watch, all the more so because it echoes the times we live in.
If you're only familiar with the movie version, well, that's a much gentler take on the stage show. In particular, it removes an entire subplot that makes the show's point far less subtle.
On stage, Sally Bowles is still there, wild and free and oblivious, somehow falling in with Cliff, also oblivious, but getting less so as the show progresses. He's American and she's British. When he arrives in Berlin at the show's opening, he's befriended by a pleasant German fellow, Ernst, who hooks Cliff up with an apartment in the building run by Fraulein Schneider. Missing from the film is the Fraulein's December-December romance with Herr Schulz, a businessman and a Jew. Their stories are interspersed with numbers in the Kit Kat Club, hosted by the Master of Ceremonies, who insures us that inside the club, everything is beautiful.
Denial is a major theme of the work. Schneider deals with her prostitute boarder by just pretending that's not what's going on. Schulz insists that politics don't matter; it will all blow over. Cliff is smuggling contraband for Ernst, raising money for a good cause, and he doesn't ask what. The club is the heart of an endless wild party that ignores the outside world. And the audience is swept along--what fun songs! What delightful dancing!
But at the end of Act I, at Schneider and Schiltz's engagement party, Ernst stops by, takes off his overcoat, and we see that the good cause of this affable, friendly man is the Nazi party. He is happy to find his old friend about to be married late in her life--until he learns that Schultz is a Jew. "You must not marry him. It is for your own safety," he tells Schneider. And then the crowd signs "Tomorrow belongs to me," now clearly a Nazi anthem. End Act I.
Act II is brief and brutal. The engagement is broken, and while Cliff and Sally offer Fraulein Schneider cheery bromides about togetherness and standing up for what you believe, she asks them (and the audience) what would you do? Cliff, rocked by all of this, wants to take the now-pregnant Sally to America, but instead she retreats to the club. Introduced one last time by a Master of Ceremonies who is no longer saucy and confident, but is now hollowed out and resigned, introduces her one last time.
This is where the song "Cabaret" comes in, a song that is familiar as a happy upbeat piece--but only when taken wildly out of context. In context--well, this was the part in the show where I was almost brought to tears. It is an anthem to denial in the worst of times. "No use permitting some prophet of doom to wipe every smile away" sounds great, unless the prophet is correct. And the verse, about her old friend Elsie, outlines her aspiration to be a happy, young corpse who dies while the party is still going on. And then, after the last note, she collapses on stage.
It's downhill all the way. Sally gets an abortion. Schultz moves out to make things easier for Schneider. He's still confident that he will be fine because this will all boil over and her is, after all, a German himself; we know that he's wrong. Cliff leaves for America, alone and with a story about the end of the world and Sally Bowles (that is, of course, the novel on which the theater piece is based). The Master of Ceremonies ushers the characters into the mists of oblivion, the stage goes dark, and here, at the end of the show, nobody applauds.
Cabaret is a subversive work. It's about people who party and play and entertain themselves into denial while doom and destruction gather around them, and as we in the audience figure that out, we can say "These foolish people. Who just plays in the face of obvious evil," but then we have to confront our own hands, applauding the characters for those actions. And it becomes increasingly more difficult. There's a fun number with a dancing kick line that turns into a goose step. The Master of Ceremonies shares a cute song and dance with a gorilla that ends with an ugly gut punch of anti-semitism. Do we applaud, or not?
When the show was developed in the mid-sixties, Producer Harold Prince was aiming for a show that would provide gritty moral dilemmas that evoked the moral struggles of the time.
The song "Cabaret" joins the small group of misconstrued songs in musicals (see also "One" from Chorus Line and the finale to Kander and Ebb's other genius show, Chicago), songs that in context are about exactly the opposite idea that casual listeners ascribe to them. The real central song of the show, for my money (and not just because my wife sang the hell out of it every time) is Fraulein Schneider's "What Would You Do?"
With time rushing by,What would you do?
With the clock running down,
What would you do?
The young always have the cure-
Being brave, being sure
And free,
But imagine if you were me.
Alone like me,
And this is the only world you know.
Some rooms to let?
The sum of a lifetime, even so.
I'll take your advice.
What would you do?
Would you pay the price?
What would you do?
Suppose simply keeping still
Means you manage until the end?
What would you do,
My brave young friend?
Grown old like me,
With neither the will nor wish to run;
Grown tired like me,
Who hurries for bed when day is done;
Grown wise like me,
Who isn't at war with anyone?
Not anyone!
With a storm in the wind,
What would you do?
Suppose you're one frightened voice
Being told what the choice must be.
I will listen.
What would you do?
If you were me?
ICYMI: Fall Back Edition (11/5)
School Choice is Becoming Involuntary Tithing
SC Superintendent of Education Ellen Weaver Addresses School Librarians
What Happens When Young People Actually Read “Disturbing” Books