Earlier today I brought my kids to the doctor for their yearly well check. The office was unusually busy and by the time we had finished with exams, blood work, boosters and flu shots it was too late to bother bringing them along to school. No one was too broken up about that. My kids love school, but they also love a day off and since by now it was pushing 12:30 we decided to enjoy a leisurely lunch.
Settling into a wide curved booth, my oldest boy noticed a woman in very high heels at a table across the way. He asked my wife why women did that, how it could possibly be comfortable and if it had a permanent negative impact on their bodies.
As we are wont to do in our family, this led to a series of tangential discussions to include foot binding, head binding and the potential for genetic mutations from environmental and human induced pressures. The kid is smart and he thinks deeply, never ceasing to impress us with his comprehension. We indulge that whenever possible.
At one point he brought up Lucy in regard to a sidebar involving evolution, and I took the opportunity to remind him that as he grows up he is likely to encounter folks who will tell him it's impossible for there to be a human ancestral skeleton that old, because the Earth has only been around for about 5000 years and thus, the record is wrong.
As a public school student here in Texas, he is often up against other students who are being raised with these beliefs and he finds that frustrating. "I don't understand how or why anyone would think it was ok to push their beliefs on anyone else" was his exact statement today as we arrived at the issue of creationism in the classroom. "All they need to know they can find in Amendment I of the Constitution, and if they need more than that they should read and learn to understand the Declaration of Independence."
As my wife and I looked at one another in surprise amusement, the boy began to recite the Preamble, from memory, right there in the middle of the restaurant.
If Texas State Senator Dan Patrick had his way that kind of thinking would be officially unwelcome in Texas public schools.
Join me over the fancy longhorns for more.
From Wikipedia:
Dan Goeb Patrick (born Dannie Scott Goeb;[1] April 4, 1950)[2][3] is an American radio talk show host and politician from Houston, Texas. He is currently serving his second term as a Republican member of the Texas Senate representing the 7th District, which includes a small portion of the city of Houston and several Houston-area suburbs located mostly in northwest Harris County.
Patrick defeated three-term incumbent David Dewhurst in the May 27, 2014, primary runoff to win the Republican nomination for Lieutenant Governor of Texas.[4]
Back when Dan Patrick was running for his first Senate seat, establishment Republicans regarded his candidacy with a mixture of awe and suspicion. His long tenure as a Houston Sportscaster and then as a right-wing radio shock jock had endowed him with a gift for gab that may be the envy of many politicians.
I remember the young Dan Patrick from my first years in Houston. His personality, part of the reason for his ultimate success in politics, was unmistakable and unforgettable.
From Texas Monthly:
Most broadcasters succeed by smoothing their rough edges. Patrick quickly distinguished himself as a media madman; he excelled in a town where the competition included whorehouse-busting eccentric Marvin Zindler. He was a newsroom prima donna, but he also possessed remarkable talents, not the least of which was the ability to speak off the cuff indefinitely, without a teleprompter, which earned him the nickname the Silver-tongued Devil. Patrick also knew how to turn his need for attention into ratings gold: Besides painting himself blue in support of the Oilers, he did sportscasts wearing an oversized cowboy hat, rising out of a casket, and wearing a tuxedo and breaking into song. By 1983 he was the second-most-popular TV personality in Houston. Success, however, did not bring happiness. Sensing that there was more to life than reading sports scores every night, Patrick decided to change careers.
With all his slick and snake oil on talk radio, Patrick has been able to amass a listenership of ready-made voters that is the envy of his Party. This base has carried him through two elections for State Senate, a Lt. Governor primary, and in just a month from yesterday, he may be poised to win that race against Democratic opponent
Leticia Van de Putte. This core listening constituency is the activist, Tea Party, ultra-conservative and ultra-religious base so many outside of the State have come to associate with Texas. It is also the constituency that most reflects his own world view. He is not simply a panderer, he believes what he preaches.
As so apty described by Texas Monthly:
Patrick told me his listeners are 65 percent male and 35 percent female, with the ages of the men spanning from forty to sixty, while almost all the women are over fifty. Ninety percent of them are white. “Minorities don’t listen to talk radio. Young women under forty aren’t listening,” he told me. “The nature of the audience tends to be conservative and Republican.” Then he shrugged, as if to say that his content was, then, a no-brainer.
“The typical Dan supporters are the ones wearing the crazy buttons and hats that blink on and off at political conventions,” a GOP consultant explained. “Sophisticated Republicans take their votes but don’t embrace them. Dan embraces them. He touches the lepers.” In the process, Patrick has reenergized and reengaged the base and, not coincidentally, created a constituency for himself. When an elected official charged that Patrick had only 60,000 listeners, his political consultant and chief of staff, Court Koenning, replied, “If that’s true, fifty-eight thousand of them vote in the primaries.”
Dan Patrick's rise to the Senate has landed him some plum assignments, including as chairman of the Senate of the Education Committee. In this role he has championed the introduction of Creationism to the classroom, a long time focus of his activist base. He shares their belief that Christians have been discriminated against in the public arena and by
public education in particular, and that it's a civil rights issue.. He is determined to put God (his version anyway) back into the classroom, and not coincidentally we have seen during his tenure an aggressive State Board of Education attempt to
rework textbooks, especially the
science curriculum, in favor of the the Creationist agenda.
Earlier this year, as Patrick waged his bruising fight for the Lt. Governor nomination against fellow arch-conservatives Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson and the current Lt. Governor David Dewhurst., he distinguished himself among these men as the fathers-right candidate in the race. That is no small feat, as Patterson and Dewhurst are among the kind of far-right politicians that make outsiders blush with embarrassment. That Patrick was able to unseat the sitting Lt. Governor
and secure the nomination is a testament to just how etreme he, and by extension his base, is. As he prepares himself to assume power in Austin, it's worth our time to have a look at these beliefs in his own words.
On abortion, from a primary debate: Q:“Do you believe that a woman should be able to choose abortion in cases of rape and incest?”
DAN PATRICK: “The only exception—the only exception—would be if the life of the mother is truly endangered for that doctor and that family to make that decision of the mother and the baby. … In those rare circumstances where the life of the mother is on the line, most mothers say let my baby live.”
On the role of Creationism in the classroom:
PATRICK: “Our children must really be confused. We want them to go to school on Sunday and we teach them about Jesus Christ and then they go to school on Monday—they can’t pray they can’t learn about creationism. They must really be confused.”
“When it comes to creationism, not only should it be taught, it should be triumphed, it should be heralded.”
It is this last issue, education, that I find most personally compelling. Beyond my general dislike of the man and of his beliefs and political agenda, it his determination to undermine the public classroom by insinuating religious fundamentalism into the daily lives of Texas children, whether they like it or not.
In less than 30 days Texas voters will go to the polls to choose a new Governor and a new Lt. Governor. It is incumbent upon all registered Democratic voters to turn out at the polls and make a point of pulling the lever for Wendy Davis and Leticia Van De Putte. You can find the Donate button behind those links.
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