I Love Melissa Harris Perry

Perry responds to the faux outrage about her MSNBC ad, which basically says everybody should want good schools in their communities and be willing to pay for them:

“My inbox began filling with hateful, personal attacks on Monday, apparently as a result of conservative reactions to a recent “Lean Forward” advertisement now airing on MSNBC, which you can view above. What I thought was an uncontroversial comment on my desire for Americans to see children as everyone’s responsibility has created a bit of a tempest in the right’s teapot. Allow me to double down. 

“One thing is for sure: I have no intention of apologizing for saying that our children, all of our children, are part of more than our households, they are part of our communities and deserve to have the care, attention, resources, respect and opportunities of those communities. 

“I believe wholeheartedly, and without apology, that we have a collective responsibility to the children of our communities even if we did not conceive and bear them. Of course, parents can and should raise their children with their own values. But they should be able to do so in a community that provides safe places to play, quality food to eat, terrific schools to attend, and economic opportunities to support them. No individual household can do that alone. We have to build that world together. 

“So those of you who were alarmed by the ad can relax. I have no designs on taking your children. Please keep your kids! But I understand the fear. 

“We do live in a nation where slaveholders took the infants from the arms of my foremothers and sold them for their own profit. We do live in a nation where the government snatched American Indian children from their families and “re-educated” them by forbidding them to speak their language and practice their traditions. 

“But that is not what I was talking about, and you know it.”   Emphasis added.

Too often, we respond to the crazies by backing down, when we need to double down.  And I just love that “you know it” at the end — calling them out on their crude calculation, which should never be mistaken for confused concern.

Perry wants to live in an America where no one is ignorant.  Her attackers want to keep the ignorant constantly outraged over nothing.

 

Quote of the Day

“The public wants guns out of the schools, not in the schools.  I don’t think the NRA is listening.”

GOP pollster and evil genius Frank Luntz

A Message to NRA Members

If you disagree with what you’re hearing from Wayne LaPierre, let him know by sending your membership card back.

The NRA no longer speaks for the majority of its members, let alone the majority of this country, just the lunatic fringe and the gun and ammo manufacturers.

LaPierre Has Splaining To Do

At first I was dismayed when I saw that the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre will be on Meet the Press tomorrow.  I thought why give his garbage any more of an audience?

But then I realized that it’s wonderful he’s on, so we can hear him explain how much good that armed guard did at Columbine.

NRA’s Solution — Cops in Every School

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”  Wayne La Pierre, head of the NRA, at his press conference today in response to the Newtown massacre.

Um, how about stopping that bad guy from getting the gun, so that he doesn’t ever become “a bad guy with a gun.”

Anyway, LaPierre’s solution is to have police officers in every single school in the country.

And for good measure, he blamed violent movies, video games and music videos.

So, the NRA wants more cops who will of course need more guns.  Since the NRA really represents gun manufacturers, that is a great solution to make its masters richer.

Sometimes you don’t know whether to laugh or cry, but this is really a moment to just scream at the top of your lungs.

 

 

Enough Is Enough

Virginia Sen. Mark Warner and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, both of whom have A ratings from the NRA, are saying that we need new gun laws after Newtown.

Warner says, “Enough is enough.  … [T]here are ways to get to rational gun control.”

Manchin says, “This awful massacre has changed where we go from here.”

It means a lot more having folks like Warner and Manchin on board than just those you’d expect like California Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Yesterday I posted that this felt like a Sputnik moment to me.  This morning I’m thinking that another, and maybe better, analogy is the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City in 1911.

146 garment workers, almost all of them young Italian and Jewish immigrant women in their teens or early 20’s, died when a fire broke out in their factory, and they were locked in because the factory owners feared theft of materials.  Many jumped to their deaths to escape the heat and flames.

Within two years, New York had passed 60 new labor reform laws, and the horrific Triangle fire was instrumental in the development of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union.

The final six victims of the fire were positively identified only last year, the centennial of the tragedy.

WTF Quote of the Day

“We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools.  Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?”

Former AR Gov. and current Fox News Host Mike Huckabee

This isn’t about taking God from schools, this is about taking guns from crazy people.

Not-So-Smart ALEC

Paul Krugman places Florida’s Stand Your Ground law in the broader context of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and its adverse effect on our society*:

“And if there is any silver lining to Trayvon Martin’s killing, it is that it might finally place a spotlight on what ALEC is doing to our society — and our democracy.

“What is ALEC?  Despite claims that it’s nonpartisan, it’s very much a movement-conservative organization, funded by the usual suspects:  the Kochs, Exxon Mobil, and so on.  Unlike other such groups, however, it doesn’t just influence laws, it literally writes them, supplying fully drafted bills to state legislators.

“Many ALEC-drafted bills pursue standard conservative goals:  union-busting, undermining environmental protection, tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy.   ALEC seems, however to have a special interest in privatization — that is, on turning the provision of public services, from schools to prisons, over to for-profit corporations.

“ALEC’s claim to stand for limited government and free markets is deeply misleading.  To a large extent the organization seeks not limited government but privatized government, in which corporations get their profits from taxpayer dollars, dollars steered their way by friendly politicians. In short, ALEC isn’t so much about promoting free markets as it is about expanding crony capitalism.”  Emphasis added.

*  “Lobbyists, Guns and Money,” NYT