From Hero to Un-Person

If you're looking for a role model to teach your children that good citizenship means protest and dissent rather than obedience; that one person can make a difference, and that you don't have to be born white, male or middle-class to become a genuine hero, you'd be hard put to find a better one than Dolores Huerta.

American history books used to hold her up to third graders as an example of good citizenship, but no more.

In 1988, when she was 58 years old and already a national treasure, she was demonstrating peacefully against the platform of George H.W. Bush when she attacked and severely beaten, nearly to death by out of control San Francisco policemen who gave the 58 year old women several broken ribs and a ruptured spleen. This week another kind of violence was perpetrated against Dolores. People For The American Way alerted their community about it:

The Texas State Board of Education voted to adopt new curriculum standards, which uses the state’s education system to push a conservative political agenda. Among the changes the board agreed to were resolutions adding the study of Right Wing movements to the curriculum, and pushing strongly conservative viewpoints on issues ranging from the United Nations to Social Security and Medicare benefits.

In a 6-9 vote, the Board rejected a proposal to restore labor and civil rights leader and People For the American Way board member Dolores Huerta to the elementary school curriculum. Huerta was previously taught as an example of good citizenship in third grade history classes, but was removed from the curriculum in January.

Michael B. Keegan, President of People For the American Way, issued the following statement:

“The Texas Board of Education’s decision to remove Dolores Huerta from the state’s curriculum standards, while adding divisive Right Wing figures such as Newt Gingrich and Phyllis Schlafly is an insult to the millions of Americans whose lives Huerta has improved, and detrimental to the education of children in Texas and throughout the United States.

“The state’s previous curriculum included Huerta because she has played an important role in our nation’s history. Erasing her from the curriculum not only denigrates her work; it belittles the invaluable contributions of generations of minority activists. That’s unacceptable and a disservice to Texas students.

“Dolores Huerta is a hero for all Americans who value a fair and just society and she shouldn’t be removed from our history. In her decades of work as a labor organizer and civil rights leader, she has helped millions of workers gain a voice at the bargaining table in order to earn fair wages; she has worked to ensure that people of all races and ethnicities are treated equally under the law; and she has been a role model for women in leadership.

“The removal of an important figure like Dolores Huerta from the Social Studies curriculum is emblematic of the School Board’s decision to force politics into the classroom.”

Mousing Fun with the Freakazoids

In case you missed the Link of the Day, Wonkette definitely has the best comments.



But via comments at Pharyngula, we have an alternative version which should stop the vomiting almost immediately.

Remember, the true meaning is in the alt-text connected to every figure. Mouse carefully; it's not well calibrated.

Correcting the Revisionism: No, Virginia, Dubya's Not a Hero

Being nice to the retarded kid who's moving out of town is one thing: flaying history and reality alive in an attempt to make the retarded kid sound like Einstein is something else entirely.

The indispensable Rude Pundit catches it and exposes every criminal lie.

You remember how, right after the 9/11 attacks, we were all scared shitless and the White House was telling us to stick our heads between our legs and kiss our asses good-bye because brownish people were going to fuck our shit up with their exploding shoes and nuclear suitcases o' doom? ... You remember all that? That sense of panic and imminent demise? Yeah, well, fuck you, 'cause you're wrong. It was actually a serene time.

At least according to Admiral Mike Mullen, Chair of the Joint Chiefs, who, during Tuesday's military parade in "appreciation" of President George W. Bush, said in his lubricious hummer of a speech, "After this nation was attacked by a rising evil, the same evil which later murdered many others in places like London, Madrid, Islamabad and Mumbai, you quickly led us from the grip of fear to a serenity of purpose and unity of action - serenity well beyond our dreams on September 12th, when all thought further attack was not only likely, but gravely imminent. And through your vision, a new national security was rendered to reach our enemies where they hid and trained and celebrated deadly crimes."

Now that's some motherfucking historical revisionism: the man who pogo-sticked around the country on September 11, 2001 like a hyperactive toddler on the run from the boogeyman actually was achieving some kind of Zen state of retarded enlightenment that allowed him to clear his head and pronounce, "I'm gonna attack a country that had nothing to do with those planes." Seriously, this is like a rapist-murderer being honored for his belief in safe sex.

This crap has just started. Every move President Obama makes will be met with a fairy tale of how the heroic and divine Dubya handled a much greater difficulty so brilliantly, every setback met with fantasies of how every bad thing could have been avoided if only the perfect 43 were still in charge.

Dismissing it as the ravings of the criminally insane will only allow the poisonous meme to survive and thrive, until it is enshrined in our grandchildren's textbooks.

Don't wait until it's too late. Fight the historical revisionism wherever you find it. Memorize and repeat this mantra:

George W. Bush is a war criminal who shredded the Constitution, ruined the military, smashed the economy, accelerated environmental collapse and damn-near destroyed the country.

Read the Rude One's whole rant. X-rated.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.