Terhar and Smith: Driving education off the page

If you're looking for troublesome  evidence of the right-wing zealots who are attempting to take control of how we educate our kids, look no farther than the Ohio Board of Education.  As the standard-setting camp for public education, it has  two Kasich appointees who wouldn't mind casting  it  into the inglorious dark past of book burning and Red baiting.

In short order,  the board's president, Debe Terhar, called for the removal of Toni Morrison's  The Bluest Eye, from the reading list of high school students.  She said the  Nobelist's book contained a rape scene that she wouldn't want her, or anybody else's, grandchildren to read.

Earlier, Terhar, a devout Tea Party member from Cincinnati, stirred up her Facebook audience by referencing Hitler to President Obama's support of background gun checks.    (Terhar later apologized for spewing such garbage.  But she had already made her point to her fans.)

Meantime, fellow-board member  Mark Smith, president of Ohio Christian University in Circleville, said such books are "divisive" (Its heroine is a black girl who wishes she had blue eyes in order to have a more comfortable fit in a white society.)

Smith referred to the book's genre as having an "underlying socialist-communist agenda...that is  anti what this nation is about."

Talk about divisiveness!

The fear of books by politically or religiously inspired critics  has long created odorous  baggage for society, from Savonarola's bonfires of the vanities, to Hitler's pyres to the red scare of the 50s and 60s when J. Edgar Hoover's FBI and Joe McCarthy's inquisition  tried to twist the public mind into their distorted vision of a free society.  Among the prime targets was Albert Einstein's scientific papers and pacifist letters in defense of others. Hoover passionately but cautiously wanted to deport the world famous  German Jew but worried about backlash.

(As a personal note about the witch hunts of those times:  As a college student in a philosophy class at the University of Illinois, I  and the other students were frequently reminded by the fearful prof that as we discussed the chapter on Karl Marx, we should be aware that they were  Marx 's ideas, not his. He didn't offer the same disclaimers when we turned the pages to John Locke or David Hume.)

Thousands of teachers and others  lost their jobs as questionable patriots from the horrific attacks by Hoover (an obsessive  cross-dresser, and quirky on some other matters) ,  McCarthy ( a blustering  alcoholic)  and various House Un-American Activities committees throughout  the land. The Birch Society even referred to President Eisenhower as a communist sympathizer while others, including Einstein were dumped into the same crowd.   Many of the targets were Jewish immigrants who had found a way out of Hitler's Nazi embrace. And,of course, Martin Luther King, a perfect fit for  Hoover's racist degradation.

Why is this important now?   Well,it wasn't that long ago that America, including the national media, was paralyzed by fear - not of the Commies but of the menace of Hoover and Co.

If Terhar and Smith want to educate high schoolers in the threat of fascists, no better place to leave grandchildren to the rest of us and begin by adding Fred Jerome's chilling The Einstein File,  written  more than a decade ago.

 I had first decided to fashion my own response to Terhar and Smith in a tongue-in-cheek way, dismantling these would-be emperors' new clothes.  But, folks, the subject is simply too serious to make light of it.

But I do want to thank Gov. Kasich for providing me with the grist for this cautionary column.
                       

Obama really Hitler? Naw, says school board chief

This is how Debe Terhar describes herself on line:   

"I am President of the Hamilton County Republican Women's Club, a member of the Warren County Republican Women's Club, the Hamilton County Republican Club, the Green Township Republican Club and an early participant of the Tea Party Movement.   I am a member of  both the Northwest and Southwest Tea Parties of Hamilton County and the Lebanon Tea Party in Warren County."

Had enough?  Oh, I should tell you that Debe Terhar  was just re-elected president of the State Board of Education by her  associates on the board. I should also add that Terhar posted a picture of Adoph Hitler on her Facebook to protest the Obama administration's moves on gun control.

When asked by a Columbus Dispatch reporter about her posting of the Nazi chief, Terhar insisted it was not a reference to President Obama. (Nor, we assume, were  placards of Hitler and Obama at Tea Party rallies.)

"I'm not comparing the president to Adolph Hitler," Terhar told the Dispatch reporter.  "It's the thought of disarming citizens, and this has happened  throughout history.  What's the true intention of the Second Amendment?  It was to protect us from tyrannical government.  God forbid."

Also disarming  is the thought that Terhar is the head of state school board with majority  support from the other members.

Spinning and apologies along the GOP trail...

NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND:

Have you noticed how often certain politicians apologize for mindless things they said or did yesterday or during the past millennium? Or at least, in Rick Santorum's case, insisting that his words were misunderstood or taken out of context? You can claim that with ease if you blame it all on the media, without which, no more than a few would be able to identify you in San Francisco, London or Vatican City. Besides, did you really not intend to suggest that President Obama was Hitler? Insofar as the media are concerned, I happened to watch the Arizona debate on the TV medium of CNN, where you have been known to share your remarks. Let's let your references to Obama and Satan pass until you have had enough time to say you were misunderstood.

Although Santorum is said to have gained traction with the Tea Party for being authentic - he pounded his chest yesterday, a popular mournful gesture in the Middle East - I would still vote for McNewt Gingrich's unwavering grasp of campaign slander by accusing Obama of infanticide. Gingrich never apologizes about anything, responding to each question with "First of all...", an undeniable attribute of his organized madness.

In McMitt's case, he is much easier to follow. He is quite clear about his deep love of cars and the right height of trees in Michigan. He also sings, not on pitch, I'm afraid, "America the Beautiful." In those moments I want him to go back to loving trees and cars, where his insights on nature and industry attempt to be authentic.

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Speaking of apologies, Ohio House Speaker Bill Batchelder has now partly apologized for telling a Lincoln Day dinner audience in Akron that Obama ought to be sent to prison for "25 years to life." But his response to questions about his civility actually made a joke of the joke that critics found repugnant. The Columbus Dispatch quoted him as saying he wouldn't apologize for the alleged quip but he would do so to a legislative colleague, Akron Democrat Vernon Sykes. Sykes had demanded an apology for the Speaker's "distasteful remarks." Rep. Bob Hagan, Youngstown Democrat, went further, calling Batchelder an "ass". Wanna bet $10,000 that Hagan has no intention of apologizing? As for me, I am still wondering about Gov. Kasich's graphic description of his wife as "hot". You can only go so far in the vernacular, Guv, particularly when your public approval rating is wondering around in the 30s.

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Finally, everyone knows that annual state- of-the-whatevers are always positive about the incumbant who is giving them. So we shouldn't be too critical of Cuyahoga Falls Mayor Don Robart's annual self-congratulatory state of the city address, which boasted of bountiful progress by his administration. But we will certainly quibble with his vision of his fiscal stewardship while the federal government is running up "massive deficits." So it was good to see that Beacon Journal reporter Paula Schlels, who covered the speech, also reported that the Falls "is stretching its dollars with the help of state and federal grants." Funny how Republican leaders who sock the Feds never remember to say thanks for the grants that are part of those "massive deficits".