Amanda Marcotte of Salon has a write up and video of a gay student telling Moms For Liberty co-founder and Sarasota School Board Member Bridget Ziegler she needs to be fired for being bad at her job not because she had a threesome!
Let’s go to the video:
His name is Zander Moricz, and I think he does a really good blow by blow about how bad a leader Bridget Ziegler is.
And here is the money qoute from Amanda Marcotte:
"You do not deserve to be removed from it for having a threesome," Moricz declared to Bridget Ziegler's face, in one of the most satisfying speeches of the year. "That defeats the lesson we’ve been trying to teach you, which is that a politician's job is to serve their community, not to police personal lives."
"Bridget, you deserve to be fired from your job because you are terrible at your job," he concluded. "Not because you had sex with a woman.”
A master class in going low to go high. Moricz managed to use Ziegler's sex life to humiliate her while making a larger point against using sex as a weapon against ordinary people. It was also a fitting obituary for Moms for Liberty, which may limp on for some time as an organization, but whose political power is disappearing along with Bridget Ziegler's ability to keep up the "chaste church lady" act.
Emphasis is mine.
I know that Michelle Obama is loved and a well respected strong woman, but I never agreed with her “We go high when they go low!” advice. Republicans have only gotten worse as the years have rolled on, and we are in a political war with the likes of the Ziegler’s. If we have to humiliate people like the Ziegler’s to stop them, so be it.
And actually, we are not the ones who humiliated the Ziegler’s. They did that all themselves with their own blatant hypocrisy and videotapes. And you cannot run around and persecute others without having some stones thrown back your way, especially when you are living a lie.
But Moricz is correct. Look at Ziegler’s record. Her kids go to a PRIVATE SCHOOL! She does not believe in public education. This position afforded her a political platform to push a fascist ideology.
And as Marcotte points out, Moms for Liberty is proving to be a bust politically.
In November of 2021, Moms for Liberty scored big when Republican Glenn Youngkin won Virginia's gubernatorial race, running on a platform of annoyance over pandemic restrictions and fury that Black authors like Toni Morrison were being assigned in English class. This created a veritable mania in the GOP, which hoped that racist and homophobic panic, as well as lingering pandemic resentments, could be the key to winning over the mothers of school-age children, a group that has been trending left in the Donald Trump era. Moms for Liberty was lavished with money, attention, and acclaim, all in the hopes that their book-banning mania would be the key that unlocked future Republican victories.
There was always good reason to be skeptical that the Moms were all they were cracked up to be. Post-election data showed that Youngkin did not actually get a surge of votes from parents angry about "woke" schools, but because elderly white people who were angry over Trump's loss turned out in large numbers, while other demographics, no doubt sick of politics, stayed home. Nor was there any evidence that the public had developed a sudden enthusiasm for censorship, as polls showed 83%-87% of voters opposed the Moms for Liberty-style book bans. Plus, common sense should have warned that they were wrong to believe Americans wished to continually relitigate the mask wars after the pandemic's end.
Sure enough, Moms for Liberty never made good on its promise to spin electoral gold out of culture war straw. The story of the past couple of years has been how much voters reject Christian right busybodies trying to control our sex lives, our reading material, and our right to ignore some unhinged church lady screaming about how the queers are trying to critically race theorize her precious white children. Moms-linked candidates who snuck onto school boards were voted out. Republicans underperformed in most elections. Instead, voters were driven by support for abortion rights, which stands in for a whole constellation of "mind your own business, Karen" attitudes in the public.
Also, look at what happened to Youngkin in the latest election. The legislature is now in Democratic hands. This was supposed to be the time when Youngkin delivered on all those promises he made, and it would make him a last second alternative to Trump in 2024.
No one is talking about that anymore.
Unfortunately for the Florida GOP, the Ziegler’s are defiant and are not going to resign from either of their positions. Even the Florida GOP knows how radioactive the Ziegler’s are, but they both will be around for the next election. Hopefully, some Florida Democrat will be able to make some hay out of this scandal? Shrugs.