In the debate around the possibility of including “trigger warnings” on content in college courses, it’s worth reading the words of Jade E. Davis over at Cafe, who teaches at UNC-Chapel Hill:
There was a day in a course where we were discussing race, media, popular culture, and educational attainment. There were black students in the classroom. I was at the front of the class, and in the middle of class discussion, a student said, “Well, all the black students are here because of affirmative action.”
Never mind that we were at one of the best public universities in the country, a school that can pick and choose who they admit from a group of top candidates across ethnicities. The assumption was still that those students — and even I — did not belong in the classroom space. There was no warning. The trigger was pulled. This is the experience the New York Times piece missed.
There is still an experience of race, of poverty, of out of place-ness for so many students that come up in classes all the time without any warning.
As you can see, the story of “Constitutional Clayton” Kelly and his break-in at a nursing home where Sen. Thad Cochran’s ailing wife lives got a lot more complicated today. No fewer than three additional people – one a board member of the area Tea Party group – have been charged as co-conspirators in Kelly’s crime. You can find some imbecile who thinks it’s a good idea to do almost anything. It’s a little harder to imagine how you get four grown men, all apparently sane, to think something so crazy was going to be a good idea. But a number of you have asked me: Quite apart from the morality of it, just how did they think this was a good idea? What were they even trying to accomplish?
So, let me strap on my night-vision crazy goggles and join me after the jump for an explanation.
Two more arrests in that bizarro scheme to photograph the dementia-suffering wife of Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) in her nursing home bed. One of the new arrests: the vice chairman of the Mississippi Tea Party.
On the heels of a poll that shows Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker tied with his Democratic opponent, Robin Marty wonders if it could it be his anti-women policies that could cost him re-election.
Some give the last full measure of their devotion for their country. Others toss their lives away to break into a decrepit dying woman’s room in an old folks home in a dooftastic scheme to send the latest clown show Tea Partier to the US Senate. (Because of course that would seal the deal, right?) Meet “Constitutional Clayton” Kelly, the guy who broke into the nursing home of Thad Cochrane’s wife (reportedly in a deep vegetative state) to photograph her because somehow this was going to get Chris McDaniel elected. Give it a read. I think you’ll actually end up feeling sorry for the guy – a seemingly otherwise decent enough guy with a family nevertheless encased in a polycarbonate bubble of derp and fanaticism where the all crazy about the progressive Kristallnacht and the KKK Democrats comes to settle. Meet Clayton Kelly.
Late last night I flagged a nugget of news in a Politico story about how the House GOP had decided that a pilot program tied to the school lunch program should now only be available to “rural” kids and not ones in urban areas and ask, WTF? Sahil Kapur spent the day getting to the bottom of it and here’s his report.
Amanda Marcotte drops some science on that whole women-are-just-brainwashed-into-saying-they’ve-been-raped thing.
Police with too much time on their hands in Cary, North Carolina announce crackdown on graffiti with the word “booger” in it.
With Republicans trying to shake a rep for being indifferent to the needs of women in the workplace, doctors’ offices and elsewhere, an Oregon GOP Senate candidate, pediatric surgeon Monica Wehby, has broken a new glass ceiling with her candidacy. Police reports about harassment, physical assaults and stalking of spouses and significant others have traditionally been the preserve of male candidates. But no more. Last night Wehby clinched the GOP nomination – perhaps with the help of early voting by mail – after having police reports surface of both her ex-husband and more recently her ex-boyfriend accusing her of a mix of harassment, stalking and minor physical assaults.
I’m not sure why this isn’t a bigger deal. I hadn’t heard about it other than in this brief passage tucked away in a Politico article about the House GOP agriculture bill. But it takes a small program intended provide meals to children in the school lunch program during the summer months and says it can now only be used to benefit kids in “rural areas”.
In other words, “urban” kids are now out of luck.