Almost A Century Of Reagan
The last man to win the presidency by capturing 49 states would have turned 99 today. The anti-Reagan movement has tossed and turned over the past two decades, but it’s quite okay to call the 40th president what he was: Super Awesome.
Here’s a small dose from a healthy batch of the kind of medicine America could use these days. The first clip is taken from his farewell address of January 1989. The second shortie comes from an old-fashioned press conference when reporters challenged political leaders.
History Haters In The House
There’s a lot of reasons certain people hate history. Those reasons usually have something to do with stupid teachers who could bore children at a birthday party. Apparently some of these brainless yahoos are in charge of educating the youth of North Caroli
na.
Some Tar Heel State educators don’t think much of George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson or any other historical figures before 1877. According to proposed curriculum changes, teenagers shouldn’t have to bother with trivial little events from the past like the American Revolution or the Civil War or like, you know, irrelevant stuff like that.
In other news, the North
Carolina Department of Public Instruction is apparently hiring idiots just in case you are in the job market, completely clueless, and eager to contribute to another bloated government agency that uses tax dollars to issue moronic and dangerous initiatives.
In a nutshell, the idea is to teach high school juniors and seniors American history from 1877 on. Instead of getting the story before that time period, freshman would take a global studies course, ostensibly to learn about the environment and what makes polar bears cry. I guess this plan will remove the challenges of explaining slavery and the war it caused; although, good luck explaining every Founding Father reference Martin Luther King Jr. ever made. Does this make LBJ the new Abraham Lincoln? Yuck. My fingers just threw up in their mouth a little.
The goal of this flubtubbery* is to help students learn about recent history in greater depth. And to think, for years I’ve been explaining to students how impossible it is to understand our current world without the proper context of the past.
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Don’t just take my word for it. Listen to what Rebecca Garland, chief executive officer for the aforem
entioned N.C. Dept. of Public Instruction, has to say. She’s left plenty of slack here to strangle her own logic. You’ll have to pardon my interruptions.
“We are certainly not trying to go away from American history,” she began in a recent interview. TRANSLATION: We are trying to go away from American history.
“What we are trying to do is figure out a way to teach it where students are connected to it…” TRANSLATION: The reason teachers (oh, I’m sorry, educators) like me are boring is because we are so bored. REALITY: Why don’t these people call me? I’ll gladly charge the government exorbitant consulting fees to teach teachers how to impact students. It’s a wild strategy I’ve developed called teaching the freaking American Revolution through the eyes of people who were actually there! One recent problem has been using guesswork texts from modern blowhards who write boring and self-serving books about history. They are boring, not Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin. Read more »
What About Emmett Till?
I’m always amazed 
at how America ranks its national heroes. Since President Ronald Reagan’s 1983 bill-signing and Pres. George H.W. Bush’s 1992 proclamation, all 50 states have used this day to honor Martin Luther King Jr. for his leadership and sacrifice during the modern civil rights movement. Today will give way to a month of focusing on black history and folks like Rosa Parks. Despite all these remembrances, speeches and textbooks across the country will continue to ignore the most important spark that motivated these honored icons.
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In 1954, a 14-year-old boy left Chicago for a trip to Mississippi. Within a few days, he was abducted and brutally murdered for “talking fresh” to a white woman. This “violation” consisted of little more than a light-hearted whistle and a wink. His killers, J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, beat and shot him then attached a cotton gin fan to the body with barbed wire and sank the corpse in the Tallahatchie River. A local boy found the body three days later.
Emmett’s mother Mamie, another strong woman often left out of the history books, ordered the caretaker to open the coffin. Horrific
sights and smells escaped. She then demanded that no attempt be made to fix her boy. The funeral would be open casket. The pictures were also run by Jet magazine and are easy enough to find with Google but be forewarned if you don’t handle that type of thing well.
The impact of the images and assistance of media helped bring the story into a national light by September 1955 when the trial took place. In a segregated courtroom, eyewitnesses identified the accused men. The jury listened to the testimony but also heard the judge say, “I’m sure every last Anglo-Saxon one of you has the courage to free these men.” They did and even took an hour to grab a cola across the street before delivering the verdict. Not guilty.
Shortly after the trial, Milam and Bryant accepted $4,000 each to give the true account of what really happened. Thanks to our double jeopardy law, they could not be tried again even upon admitting guilt. In a blow-by-blow account, they detailed the murder including how enraged they became when Emmett refused to properly fear them. Blacks and civil rights supporters were outraged. They took action. Read more »
Open Ended Questions & Pregnant Bowlers
During the holiday break, I’ve discovered another way that Google makes life better. Well, more interesting an
yway.
Have you ever began typing a search question only to have random phrases suggested to help you complete your query? These phrases are based on real searches done by real people, and they are fascinating. I’m amazed at how many people go directly to the Google box with life’s largest dilemmas, but apparently they do. You really should try it out.
You can start simple enough. For example, type in a basic open ender like “how do I” and see what pops up. My personal favorite is “how do I know if I’m pregnant.” Sorry honey, anyone who could potentially create life should at least be equipped enough to figure out that little mystery without Google. Maybe she should chat with all the people asking “how do I get pregnant.”
Here’s some other tasty little chest
nuts from the search monster. They are as interesting as they are indicative of how insane our society has become. All you have to do is begin to suggest something like…
Why would anyone…
Hits under this opener range from “why would anyone believe in God” to “why would anyone name a cleanser Ajax.” What the? You can also explore why anyone would get married, buy a Mac, or play Russian roulette. My favorite has to be ”why would anyone want to be led by you.”
What should I…
This one’s good for figuring out that Halloween costume or the right Christmas gift for your boyfriend, but my personal favorite is the blunt “what should I do with my life.” Your in luck though. Looks like there’s even a quiz to find the answer.
What will… Read more »
Defining Generation X
In 2003, the original print version of EduClaytion appeared in the Pittsburgh E Resource, a bi-weekly publication of Infinity Broadcasting. After the capture of Saddam Hussein on December 15th of that year, I ran a story titled “Saddam’s Role In Defining A Generation” which chronicled the biggest events in the lifetime of Generati
on X. What were the defining moments of the first generation to grow up on television and where did the capture of Hussein rank?
Although the article wasn’t intended to rile people up, the next week I received the best hate mail ever complete with pseudo-death threat, the only one I recall receiving to date. “You will die devil man,” or something to that effect. He also called me “Hitler-Stalin-KKK man,” which gave us a few laughs around the office. M
aybe he was most angry about the illustration my artist came up with, Saddam’s head munching cheese atop the body of a rat whose tail curved down the page. He pleads, “Don’t shoot me pleeease!” Hey, even CNN agreed. We never understood what set that guy off other than the fact he was a semi-literate buffoon.
After perusing the old article recently, I got to wondering how we’ve changed. Does the list hold up? What incidents have made the most powerful impact on a generation that succeeded the Baby Boomers and (according to some) goes back as far as 1961?
Because of television, I wrote, “Gen Xers have grown up witnessing history in the making like no other generation.” We are all historians because we pass on memories formed from our visual perspective when these world-changing moments occur.
Tragic moments defined the list. I already disagree with some of these picks from six years ago, and you probably will too. I hope to hear some feedback. By the way, the cut off originally used was people born around 1970-71.
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1. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 topped the list. That won’t change. I concluded:
“The experience was prolonged, close to home, and unfolding in front of our eyes. The incredible spirit of resiliency displayed by this country was empowering but not without a dangerous side effect. The magnitude was enormous, the fear so real, and when it was over a national desensitization was inevitable. Nothing in our lives will ever shock us as it would have before the infamous attack.”
No other event held a greater significance for more people.
3. The Explosion of the Challenger Shuttle
The 2003 version of me is trying to convince v. 2009 here. I wrote:
“The historical impact of the Challenger tragedy may not equal these other events but was the quintessential moment of tragedy in the memory of Gen X…Like a first kiss, there is only one event to serve as the first time something happened in the world and we know where we were and what we were doing.”
I see what I mean but am not sure if I buy that lofty ranking.
4. The Gulf War (Persian Gulf War of 1991)
“A war on TV was not new to the country but was new to those born in the 70s. We knew men and women risking their lives…”
5. The War In Iraq
(2003)
The soldiers fighting went from older relatives to peers. I have a hunch that many people would drop this down the list, but I’m not sure.
6. The Capture of Saddam
He’s been dead for a while now, but don’t forget his record of genocide and murder. What dictator committed more atrocities in our lifetime? By December 2003, it seemed he would never be captured, but there he was cowering in a hole, a “coward’s hideout.” The serviceman who shone a light into Hussein’s face reportedly said, “President Bush sends his regards.” Later, President Bush said, “Good riddance, the world is better off without you.” What an imperialist pig. I love happy endings. Read more »
Christmas Haters
Have you ever heard a story that should be sad but makes you laugh? No, I’m not talking about the story of the 2009 Pittsburgh Steelers. The juicy little tidbit I have roasting over an open fire is about literally stealing some Christmas joy.
If Charles Dickens and Dr. Seuss would have got together, they might have come up with this true story that Huffington Post ran with the headline “Police: Christmas-Hating Man Stole Salvation Army Kettle In Maumee, Ohio.” Ebenezer Scrooge doesn’t have much on the Christmas culprit who shoved a bell-ringer to the ground, snatched the kettle filled with hundreds of dollars, and took off like the Hamburglar. The victim was an unemployed woman trying to do some good for someone.
I know that’s not very funny, but then I got to the part of the story where the man yelled out, “I can’t stand you and your bell-ringing. I hate Christmas!” What a cartoon this guy is. Sorry but I find that funny. Dont worry, the loser scrooge has been arrested. Anybody that stupid never gets away.
His name is Shawn Krieger and he apparently attended the Kanye West School of Civility and Jackassery. He narrowly escaped the woman he pushed. She chased him until he sped off in a stolen pickup truck (what else?). The poor woman feared she had let down the Army of love, but she’s been assured that she can go right on ringing those bells and sending wishes to strangers. Pretty impressive when you consider she ain’t getting paid.
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I was thinking about the Salvation Army–a.k.a. my old employer–recently after seeing a couple of bell-ringers womanning their post next to one of those iconic red kettles outside of a grocery store. The difference that caught my eye this time was the youthful appearance of the merriment wishers. The bell-ringing greeters were actually two young girls, attractive and sweet. Read more »
I Just Shot John Lennon
Doesn’t get much more random than this. December 8th is a bad day for Beatles fans. What modern icon today would be the equivalent of John Lennon if he were to be murdered? Bono from U2? Speaking of the Irish, here’s Dolores O’Riordan and Co. Remember the Cranberries? Guess I’m a sucker for punky Irish girls although she looked out there in this clip from Letterman.
Boob Jobs and The End Of The World
Tragedies come in many forms, even heart-shaped butts. The deadly risks of cosmetic surgery appeared in headlines again last week after the death of Solange Magnano, a former Miss Argentina, on November 29th. The model suffered a pulmonary emb
olism after a gluteoplasty to get a firmer butt. You may recall a similar story about the mother of Kanye West a couple of years ago. She also died from complications resulting from plastic surgery. I’d be understating the matter to call Magnano’s death needless. Did I mention she was a mom? Well, she was also a fool.
Fools by definition are people who lack good judgment. This group would include the majority of our elected officials, cult members, and generally everyone ever at some point in their life. You’ve probably had one of those “What was I thinking?” moments. We all lack good judgment from time to time, but most of us don’t lose our lives over it. I just have a hard time thinking of many reasons that could be more idiotic to die for than a tight butt.
Someone who drinks until they’re hammered and drives around town is also a fool, the only difference is that they might take the lives of others. There’s a lot of power in recklessness. I’m not talking about calculating criminals but rather self-serving seekers trying to control the uncontrollable. This recklessness just confirms my theory that we all hide private longings, those secret somethings that make special people less than speci
al when you see them behind the curtain. Just ask Tiger Woods. Like Henry David Thoreau said, most of us lead lives of quiet desperation.
That quiet desperation leads folks to do some pretty stupid things. We’re aware that no one will understand because the reality is that we are often wrong in our hidden desires and we know it. We keep selfish versions of the life we want to ourselves. In the process we pile up regrets until one day deciding that we’ve suffered enough and that we deserve whatever it is that self-appointed martyrs claim as their deathright. Lost along the way are all the blessings we’re too blind to see and all the people who suffer from our mistakes.
At some point during childhood, my sister Shannon told me that people want what they can’t have. Turns out that’s one of the truest and most lasting lessons I’ve learned. We want it all. We want. Tell the ugly duckling to understand a beauty queen unhappy with her posterior. Tell a barren wife to understand a mother who gets trashed with kids in the backseat. Try to understand anytime someone else throws away the very life you’ve long dreamed of.
Two decades later, that same sister just called to wish me a happy birthday. She asked how it felt to turn another year older. I asked her if guys could use eye cream for wrinkles without being laughed at. Her fiance laughed at me. Such is the cost of vanity. Sometimes it’s higher. Read more »
Nasty (Bacon) Bits & Pieces
Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez told his people last week they better lose some weight if their glorious revolution is to be successful. ”There are lots of fat people,” said the not-so-svelte tyrant. He explained the solution during a televised speech. “Doing sit-
ups. Eating well. One has to learn how to eat.”
> |
| Will Michael Moore heed the diet call of his buddy Chavez? |
So what does a good revolutionary eat? Soy milk and rice pasta for starters. Such healthy dishes make Chavez feel “ready to continue commanding the Bolívarian revolution”. Unfortunately, most Venezuelans prefer coke, beer, and fried pork.
I’m sure the fact that Chavez is calling his people fat has nothing to do with their love for American-style food products. I’m further confident this speech has nothing to do with coming restrictions on the lives of Venezuelans. Riiiigggghhhht.
In other news this past week, pigs may not be as stupid as we thought. Actually, let’s face it, no one cares about how smart pigs might be except for misguided researchers intent on wasting millions of dollars so we can figure out how smart our food might be before it walks to slaughter. A study on pig cognition has shown that pigs must be quick learners. Wanna know what it is to lead an empty life? Become a scientific researcher that doesn’t benefit society no matter how “successful” they ever become. I wonder if this is a government-funded (our tax money) project.
Speaking of fat pigs, Rosie O’Donnell was back in the news last week. I guess 
pigs aren’t that smart after all. She managed to chortle out a couple swears before dropping an F bomb on Fallon’s audience. By the way, Fallon loses a ton of cred in my book for appearing to be so happy about her. I thought we knew you better Jimmy.
Rosie’s lone positive contribution to society is that she didn’t ruin A League Of Their Own. I still can’t believe she played Betty Rubble, beloved cartoon of my youth. She makes Miss Piggy look like Marilyn Monroe. I never thought twice about Miss Nasty until I happened to catch her ambushing Tom Selleck on her doomed show back in 1999. She’s been an abject failure ever since.
Maybe they can send some of these fools to the moon. According to NASA, there’s plenty of water there for them to drink. You may remember back on October 9th when some hopeful observers stood on their front porch or lawn to see the Lcross Centuar make impact with the moon. Apparently you can’t see a car crash 250,000 miles away. Shocker. Read more »
Veterans Day 2009
Thank you for your service. We don’t just say it because it sounds good, and you don’t serve just because it looks good. This site is about truth, and there can be nowhere on earth where the truth is as real and powerful as in war. Many men and women have served and are serving away from battlegrounds. They sacrifice so we can be safe. They are ready when we aren’t. They lose while we live.
Thank you.
D.C. Sniper Will Die Tonight
Imagine cruising down to the local car wash one mid-morning to vacuum your car out. Now imagine that’s the last thing you ever did because a bullet that seemed to come ou
t of nowhere took your life. Lori Lewis Rivera was only 25 in October of 2002 when she met that fate. Imagine if she were your child.
Tonight, John Muhammad–the monstrous coward who killed 10 people and injured more from a trunk in 2002–will be executed on purpose. The Supreme Court isn’t letting him off. He’ll be dead by the time the Pittsburgh Penguins finish up with the Boston Bruins. Read more »
20th Anniversary Of The Wall’s Fall: Thanks For Playing Communism
Let’s see if I can slip one past the censors here like Adrian Cronauer in Good Morning Vietnam. The Berlin Wall–the very symbol of the Cold War between capitalism and communism–came down twenty years ago today. You won’t hear too much about this monstrously historic day from media types hell-bent on leading America towards some of the same failed ideas symbolized by that wa
ll. You also won’t hear about it from President Obama who is skipping the international celebration of the event! What?
Well, forgive me if I’d like to celebrate the failure of the Soviet Union and the victory, yes victory, of America and the free world in the Cold War led by President Reagan. Such statements may shock your American sensibilities, so let’s check in on Europe where they are prominently celebrating this historic anniversary, the commemoration of the day freedom won out, when our open system conquered the veiled evil, yes evil, of the Soviet’s communist empire.
The Berlin celebration will balance glitz with sobriety. World leaders such as British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Sarkozy, Russian President Medvedev, and more will be there to speak. Yet Obama won’t. As the German news publication Der Spiegel put it, “Barrack is too busy.”
Obama has already made more international trips in his first year than Bush and Clinton combined, yet he doesn’t have time to go to Berlin. Now, thanks to a little something called high school, I know a thing or two about getting blown off. I’ve heard plenty of excuses in the “I have to wash my hair all weekend” mode. So I feel qualified to say that Obama is full of it. Sorry Berlin. Like Molly Ringwald in Pretty In Pink, you can keep putting on all the makeup you want, but sometimes he just isn’t going to show no matter what he says.
This just in from the Not Speaking Of Makeup department: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is attending in Obama’s place. Oh goodie. Read more »
Wanna Fix The Economy? Start With Gym Class
You’ve probably heard by now that Americans of today are the fattest civilization in world history. Those extra pounds come at a cost to our health 
and pocketbooks. We need to help set our kids on the right track to avoid some scary trends in their future.
The NFL Network got me curious about all this with an ongoing advertising blitz to keep gym in school. Kurt Warner smiles and tells us our kids aren’t getting enough exercise. Okay, I think. Then I see Hines Ward, Super Bowl hero and newly elected “Dirtiest Player In Football” by his peers, along with other football stars running in thirty-second slow motion chunks with a bunch of kids. I wonder, have schools really been eliminating gym class and physical exercise? I process. This is the American public school system. Congress is involved. I conclude that yep, if there’s a wrong option to be pursued, our politicians will run that sick rabbit down like greyhounds on a fast track.
I hear you already, oh defender of government. Here he goes again, connecting fat kids with government while bashing politicians. You’re right. I’ll spare you my tales as a No Child Left Behind contractor and the pros and cons of that legislation. I’ll also try to tread lightly over our government in school is destroying our future pamphleteering. It’s really quite simple though, and it goes like this.
Call it EduClaytion’s Razor. Maybe you’ve heard of Ockham’s Razor, that medieval scholar who decided that if you have two or more alternatives when trying to figure out a solution, just pick the simplest explanation. Well, with EduClaytion’s Razor, whenever you have to figure out what went wrong in a particular situation, and the government is at all a character in the story, then go with the politicians involved (they’ll be the ones telling you they can make things better) and figure out what they did this time.
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The NFL Network’s site for the Keep Gym program clearly lists some facts about the importance of this drive to keep kids active. You don’t have to be a child psychologist to know that video games (and I’m a big fan) and computers have kept a lot of young people (old peeps for that matter) indoors. But consider these lowlights.
- Childhood obesity has tripled since 1980
- “Health care providers are finding more and more children with type 2 diabetes and other conditions stemming from obesity and inactivity that were previously diagnosed almost entirely in adults aged 40 years or older.”
- “Current annual medical costs related to obesity total $147 billion nationally…”
- Unfit and overweight kids perform worse academically than students who score well on fitness tests.
There’s a ton of meat (forgive the pun) in those four points, but consider that while as calories increase:
“The percentage of students who attend daily PE dropped from 42% in 1991 to 28% in 2003. Fewer than 8% of U.S. middle schools provide daily physical education for the entire school year.”
If anybody needs to run it’s junior high students. In America, health problems equal money problems, but moral and monetary issues are also connected. Develop these thoughts on your own, but obesity is only one side of this story. We aren’t even mentioning consequences of hormonal frustration and pent-up aggression. Maybe you’ve heard about increasing violence in our schools. It’s almost like our political and educational leaders want kids to be as screwed up as possible heading into life. Read more »
Obama’s Uh-Oh Of The Month
The results are in. For those of you unaware, yesterday was actually an election day. If you missed it, don’t worry. It’s only the staple of our entire republican way of life in which we give all power to elected representatives in a free and fair process that is the hallmark of democracy. Whew. Where was I?
Oh yeah, the Democrats got trounced. Not surprising if you read history books. This trend is common. As a matter of fact, you’ve perhaps heard that in all America’s history, each time a political party takes the White House (i.e. Dems in 2008), that party loses the following midterm elections. The only two exceptions are FDR and George W. Bush. Roosevelt had the country’s attention during the Great Depression while Bush rocked America’s approval following 9/11.
So independents in key states broke for the GOP last night. That simply lines up with our history, a two century string of checks and balances where the winners eventually lose and the losers can usually make a comeback.
You can read any of a thousand articles for details, but here’s the important basics you should know to gather the meaning of these elections.
- Obama ’s influence takes a hit. He personally campaigned a good deal for his party, most notably Democratic gubernatorial candidates in NJ (Corzine) and Virginia (Deeds). They both lost even with the president’s backing.
- Independents have shifted direction. Last year, the valuable Indies helped Obama to the top. Last night, they showed concerns over the past year’s progress.
- Republicans now have a playbook that works. Every republican candidate on the ballot next year will hammer the same strategies that won voters last night. Not too hard really when the economy is in the tank, Democrats are in total control of the government, and Obama has struggled to achieve some of his top campaign priorities.
- Speaking of those priorities, big reform efforts by the Dems will be scaled back by politicians fearful of the pro-GOP trend. If they lost votes during this part of the process, you can guarantee those Democratic leaders will fear a voter revolt if they over-pursue controversial measures such as the ones included in healthcare reform.
- The base was not kickin’. Last year, Obama inspired millions of young voters who just didn’t care or show up yesterday. Last night’s electorate was also much whiter than last Novemeber when Blacks and Hispanics played a huge role in the Dems romp. If the no shows continue like this in 2010, the Democrats will be beaten down even more.
That’s the cool thing about history: You can usually see all this coming. The future is often predictable because we have the past to base our guesses on. The past is just what people did yesterday, and people are pretty predictable.
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Welcome To Here
In The Matrix, Morpheus tells Neo he can take the blue pill and go on believing whatever he wants to believe. Or he can take the red pill to stay in Wonderland and find out how deep the rabbit hole goes.
This is a red pill type site that provides information in an entertaining way. It’s about clear thinking and good writing. It’s about truth.
I’m a writer/speaker who teaches history and political science at a local college by day. Where is local, you say? Well, that would be Wonderland of course.
From pop culture to pop politics, this is my column.
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See My Article In The PITTSBURGH POST GAZETTE
Click it right here for my latest piece which appeared in a Sunday edition of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. The article became one of the most emailed on the PG website that day.
March 27, 2009 Posted by educlaytion | History | columnist, commentary, forum, freelance, houdini, publishing, writing | No Comments Yet